


A Dream Worth Fighting For

by Satelesque



Series: Before the Curtains Rise [2]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alastor is in Hell for a Reason (Hazbin Hotel), Assassination Plot(s), Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Conspiracy, Contracts, Demon Deals, Everyone is in hell for a reason, Family, Gen, Murder, Original Character-centric, POV Outsider, Politics, Pre-Canon, Revolution, Riots, Soul Selling, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24513310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satelesque/pseuds/Satelesque
Summary: The year is 1933, and for the first time overlords aren't invincible.  For the first time, Hell's sinners have a figurehead, but Alastor barely bothers with his own territory, let alone the plight of a million faceless demons.  The revolution will need more than an icon, but Caeden Clare has never been a leader.No, Clare's place has always been on the sidelines, muddling along, chasing idle dreams, and finding ways to make do.  The sidelines are a dangerous place to stand, though, when your best friend will do anything to become that leader.  Especially once the Radio Demon starts a set of experiments in audience participation.Can be read standalone.
Series: Before the Curtains Rise [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986223
Comments: 83
Kudos: 41





	1. A Loophole to Leave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone coming here from Afterlight, heads up. I'm not kidding with that Original Character-centric tag. This is only loosely and chronologically a sequel, but if you like worldbuilding, armchair philosophy, Alastor being a creepy manipulative asshole, or making me a happy writer, go ahead and give chapter 1 a whirl!
> 
> Inspired by the song [Sin Circus](https://youtu.be/6qiMlcAnurQ) by Unlike Pluto, and not just in the obvious literal way.

_Good evening friends, acquaintances, and all you denizens of Hell who haven’t yet had the pleasure! My name is Alastor, here with a special announcement! It’s come to my attention that my new home is in dire need of a proper broadcasting station, so please. Allow me._

The voice tore through the din of afternoon practice like a siren. For almost half a minute it filled the big top, then, with a burst of static, the broadcast went silent.

Clare uncovered his ears, unhooked his knees from the trapeze, and flipped over as he dropped the twenty feet to the ground. He landed in a crouch, a perk of being reborn as a cat demon. The tradeoff was the over-sharp hearing. His ears were still ringing from the sudden screech of loudspeakers, and all the shouting guaranteed he’d be performing with a headache later.

“Nick! What in Hell do you think you’re doing? I don’t pay you to listen to the radio, now stop fiddling with the thing!”

“I didn’t touch it! It’s this Alabaster guy! He’s on our frequency!”

“Well get him off!”

“That’s not how—” Nick yelled, then sighed and finished quietly, too low for the circus owner to hear, but not Clare. “That’s not how radio works.”

Clare couldn’t help but commiserate as the owner stomped by. That was the problem with Hell-born demons. Most would happily _use_ new technology, but _understand_ it? Pah! Why bother when they had an endless supply of sinners to build it for them? No, their sensibilities had found a home in the Dark Ages and never left.

Azarrien was no different, despite his fascination with traveling circuses. He’d adjusted his feudal mindset just enough to accommodate for wages, only grudgingly accepting that he was a boss of employees now, not a lord of serfs. Clare waited until his long coat and spiked tail swept past before making his way to the water barrel. It took several minutes of arguing before Nick could join him.

For a while the two drank in silence, Clare rubbing his temples and Nick slouching and scratching at his forehead plate. “You heard?” he asked.

Clare nodded in reply.

“Then you got the new frequency. Help me out, huh? You get the high speakers, I’ll take the low ones. Never been good with heights.” Nick shifted his back plates and flicked his tail to make his point. Armadillos weren’t known for climbing.

But this was Hell, and Clare had learned before his first month was up that favors weren’t so simple. “And in exchange. . . ?”

“I heard you’re up tonight. Break a leg, and I’ll bring you dinner.”

“That’s it? Dinner?”

“And breakfast tomorrow,” Nick added. “You’re not a good haggler, Clare. Take it or leave it.”

Clare raised a brow, but Nick didn’t back down and for good reason. Some demons were born barterers, and Clare wasn’t one of them. Both friends knew it. His silence was admission enough, and they sipped at their drinks until Clare spoke again. “So what’d you think?”

“About the transmission? Or about Alchester or whoever?”

“Alastor,” Clare corrected but nodded anyway. “Either one. You’ve worked with radio. What’s your take?”

Nick shrugged. “Boss making us change the frequency’s a waste of time. The guy said he’s building a station, but he came through clear. If he doesn’t have the tech yet. . .”

“Magic?”

“Magic. I’ve never heard of the guy, but anyone novel-minded enough to manifest radio powers has potential. Control the media, and you control the people.” Nick sighed and set his cup down. “I’ve been saving up for a while now, and I’m thinking it’s time to finally get a receiver. Things are about to get interesting.”

Clare gave a noncommittal hum and finished his drink. He’d been in Hell for barely a couple years, and already turf wars were nothing to write home about. But those were smaller scuffles and mostly between sinners. From what he’d heard—which admittedly wasn’t much—it’d been a century since the last shakeup among real Hell-born overlords. Nick had an ear for these things, though. If he was interested, it’d be worth paying attention to.

For the rest of the evening possibilities drifted through Clare’s thoughts. If nobody had heard of Alastor, then odds pointed to him being some faraway lordling. Still, as Clare climbed the rigging up to the speakers, he entertained himself with wild possibilities. Maybe Alastor’d be closer, maybe some unknown grandson of a local lord.

Not that it’d affect the circus much, Clare thought as the night’s audience crowded in and the clowns took to the stage. They’d just avoid Alastor’s territories until the violence blew over. That was the benefit of a business made to be packed up and moved across the country.

But maybe Nick was on to something. If Alastor had made enough of a study of the human world to know about radio, then maybe he could bring real change. Modernize. Build a government that was more than a thinly veiled protection racket. Wishful thinking clearly, but what if?

It was always a tossup with Hell-born demons. The coin was obviously weighted, but they weren’t horrible by definition like sinners were. There was always the chance they’d be born decent people. Like the princess. It was a long shot, but Clare couldn’t help but consider it as his act started and his body went through the motions.

“And now I present our master flying trapeze artist, Caeden Clare!”

Clare’s tail flicked to keep him on course as his hands let go of the fly bar. His eyes caught a glimpse of the stands as he flipped through the air. It was the usual mass of sinister shapes. Teeth and horns and tentacles and twisted, wraithlike appendages. These were his audience now, and Clare swallowed a rush of bitterness as he held his arms out to the catcher and listened for his cue.

It didn’t come during his first swing, and he made his return to the board with a pirouette. Another performer took her turn, and it was on Clare’s third swing that he heard it.

“Pay attention now! This man is one of only three in all the worlds, living and dead, to perform the triple twisting split! Now watch as he—ooh!”

Clare overturned, throwing his arms out to make a show of trying to grab the catcher. He missed, and Clare plummeted to the ground. Instinct called for him to twist around, kill his momentum, and land on his feet, but he stopped himself halfway through. He landed, but badly, still spinning. A sickening crack echoed through the big top as his knee hit the ground and his leg snapped beneath him.

Clare knew the trick and listened for it. There. The audience was hushed with anticipation, and the music went quiet to accentuate the sound. Then came the shouting. The jeering and laughter as he screamed his pain loud enough to be heard over it.

“Ah well. I guess even cats don’t always stick the landing!” Azarrien joked. “Maybe next time, Clare! Now why don’t the rest of you turn your attention to our beautiful hellbeast tamer, Lady Artemis!”

Only when the audience was fully distracted would one of the clowns would run over to help Clare off the stage. Today it was only seconds before one of them climbed up. The costume and face paint would have made him anonymous, but Clare recognized that segmented tail.

“You’re too early,” Clare hissed between his teeth but let Nick wrap an arm under his shoulders anyway.

“It’s fine,” Nick whispered. “Artemis is up tonight. No one’s looking at us, now come on. Up to your feet. Lean on me in three, two. . .”

Clare grit his teeth as Nick pulled him up, choking his scream down to a grunt. Cold sweat trickled down his back and matted his fur, but he forced himself to stay focused. “You said Artemis is up? But she’s contracted.”

Contracted. It was the polite way to phrase it. Permanently indentured. Halfling. Soulbound.

“It’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t get hurt too bad,” Nick said. “She’s still a demon. It’s slower, but she’ll still heal like the rest of us.”

Even as he said it, the crowd roared and Azarrien shouted his commentary over the noise. “Oh my! It seems our poor girl hasn’t learned yet, the first lesson in hellbeast taming is keeping your head!”

“Ooh. That’s a shame.” Nick gave a sympathetic wince, and Clare hissed as it jostled his leg.

Some demons told him trapeze was the worst. It was trivially easy for the show to go wrong. They were up more often than most, but the injuries were minor. Broken bones, sprains, and bruises. They hurt, but he couldn’t imagine the pain of regrowing a head. The animal tamers and fire eaters and knife throwers were all worse off in his book, but some days Clare couldn’t bring himself to weigh injuries on a scale. Each and every one of them left a bitter taste in his mouth. The crack of bone, the sprays of blood, the roar of the crowd—it was all barbaric. Disgusting enough to choke on bile at the thought.

It was a long shot to hope Alastor would be like the princess. Clare knew it, and he shoved the thought aside as another idealistic daydream. Still, no matter what Alastor was, it’d be nice to have radio again. A bit of proper, wholesome entertainment.

* * *

_Good morning, ladies, gentlemen, and all you demons who don’t fit either mold! If you’ve been following along for the last month—and I dearly hope you have—you’ll know that today is the grand opening of the PCBC! Regular broadcasts start at noon, but first we have a local celebrity here for comment. Tell me sir, how does it feel knowing Hell’s first broadcasting center is opening right on your doorstep?_

A thin, cold voice muffled by distance and static joined the show. _“As you’ve no doubt been informed countless times by now, there will be no opening until I have a written and signed agreement from you. You_ will _pay the taxes due to me for operating within my territory, or your operation will be dismantled.”_

_Ha! Dismantled, you say? No, I don’t think so. Hell’s a dangerous enough place, I’m sure, but I don’t need your help to defend my own station! I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your little offer._

_“You seem to have misunder—“_

_I haven’t misunderstood a thing._

The silence stretched on until Alastor broke it.

_Oh no, sir, this simply won’t do! I can’t have you as a guest speaker if you don’t speak! Silence is the capital crime of radio, and—_

_“Presumptuous fool. You may be a dealmaker, but you’re still human. I will give you one final chance, so let me put it in terms you’ll understand. Sign now and you’ll keep this place and a share of the profits, or we tear you apart where you stand. How’s that for a deal?”_

_Hmm, decent threat, but unimaginative. I’ll give it a three out of ten. Actually, knock that down to a two for being hollow. You need to play to your audience dear. You’ll tear me apart? Please._

For a moment there was only static.

_“As you wish. I only hope your little show doesn’t cut out before they hear you begging for mercy.”_

The broadcast exploded into noise. Roars and rumbles and rushes of something that wasn’t wind. There was a screech, then a sharp tearing sound, and Clare flipped the radio off when the screaming started. Nick shot him a glare and turned it back on, but he did lower the volume. Shrill cries floated through the morning air, and over them the laughter and commentary of the Radio Demon.

“He’s done it!” Nick breathed, excited and reverent and barely holding himself in his seat. As if any moment now he’d start pacing around the courtyard and jumping for joy.

“He’s a dealmaker,” Clare said. “You never told me he was a dealmaker.”

For a moment Nick stilled and aimed a disappointed stare at Clare. “Are you serious? The guy’s a sinner. How’d you think he got that kind of magic if not for soul dealing?”

A sinner. That in itself had been a surprise. It shouldn’t have been. “My new home,” Alastor had said, right from the very start, but Clare had been too busy covering his ears to hear it.

Only a sinner. It was almost a disappointment, but it was always a long shot that Alastor would be another Charlie. None of it mattered anyway, not anymore. Dealmaking was a sin Clare could never accept. Not after Azarrien. Not after his circus. He turned back to Nick. “You act like that’s a good thing.”

Nick only shrugged, a full body motion that rolled down his scutes. “Tools are tools. It’s how you use them that matters. What you use them for.”

“Mass slaughter’s not exactly a noble cause.”

“So the guy has vices,” Nick scoffed. “It’s Hell. What’d you expect?” Then he leaned back in his chair and looked to the pentagram slowly brightening in the eastern sky. ”But he’s done it now. A sinner—a _mortal_ taking down an _overlord._ Don’t you get it? We’re not second-class anymore. We can rise up. Take over. Maybe not the whole place, but you think Lucifer’ll get off his ass just because our corner of Hell isn’t a complete shithole?”

Quiet screams still filled the air, but Clare almost laughed anyway. Maybe impossible hope was what made it so easy. Nick’s voice held enough conviction for the both of them, and that contagious light-heartedness had Clare looking up at the sky even as he mocked his friend’s declaration. “'We can rise up?’ We’re not overlords. We’re not even dealmakers.”

“We could be.”

Clare shot over a skeptical look, but Nick was still looking up at the pentagram, and his gaze was dead serious.

“That sort of thing, it’s something you know. Not everyone’s got the knack for dealmaking, but when you do, you can feel it. I’ve never done it, and I’m not gonna, but I could. I know I could. Besides, are you gonna trust a politician that ended up down here?” Clare didn’t reply, and that was answer enough. “No? Me neither. So it’s a good thing _I’m_ not a politician.”

“You’re not. . . You’re not serious, are you?”

Nick finally looked back at him, wearing a thin smile that might have been a yes or a no. “I never did tell you what I used to do, did I? Why I worked with radio? I was spreading the message. Working for the cause. I know how to run a government, at least in theory, and down here’s different enough that theory’s the best you’ll get.”

“‘Spreading the message,’ huh? What message?”

“The great revolution.” Nick grinned. “Equality for all. An end to exploitation and class struggle.”

It was the last couple words that finally clued Clare in. “So you weren’t just a propagandist. You were a _communist_ propagandist.”

Nick just raised a brow. “Don’t look at me like that. Have you ever read the Manifesto?”

“Well. . . no, but—“

“Then don’t you dare say it’s worse than the medieval mafia bullshit we’ve got down here.”

“That’s not what—“

Nick waved a dismissive hand. “I know, I know. You’re how old now? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Must’ve been barely a kid when the Bolsheviks took over. I bet you grew up on all that Great War patriotic noise and didn’t wonder for a minute if maybe we _should_ start a revolution.” Then he let out a long sigh. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. This isn’t America, and no one’ll complain if one of us gets Azarrien erased. So what do you say? Are you coming?”

The non-sequitur threw Clare completely off track, and it was a few seconds before he realized trying to think back wasn’t helping. “What’re you talking about? Coming where?”

Nick was back to looking to the eastern sky. “I’m leaving,” he said. “As soon as I can. The Radio Demon’s got territory now, and anyone smart enough to know what that means’ll be there.”

The words ran through Clare’s head again and again until he was forced to admit he hadn’t misheard. The Radio Demon? The same Radio Demon who’d been broadcasting carnage from the day he set foot in Hell? It’d be a terror to live in the same city as him, let alone right around the corner.

 _“‘Be there?’_ Are you insane? Anyone smart enough will run as far as they can!”

Nick shook his head. “You don’t get it, Clare. Haven’t you been listening? The guy’s got his vices, but bloodlust’s only one of them. He likes living the high life, and you can’t do that in a crater. Hell, he put up a goddamn radio station! I’ll bet you anything he’s rebuilding his old life down here but with him in charge. And I’ll bet _my_ life he won’t touch us if we go along with it.”

Clare frowned, looking for a counter and finding none. But that wasn’t the only problem. “How are you getting out?” Clare asked. “Our contracts. . .” He trailed off, but his meaning was clear.

The terms of Clare’s work contract had been very precise. Leaving the circus for any length of time meant getting approval. Approval meant asking Azarrien, and it always came with a deadline. Going over it would incur debt equivalent to his wages—debt which if left unpaid would force him into a soul contract. His wouldn’t be the first.

But Nick just smiled. “I already worked it out with him. Told him radio runs on advertisements, and I can get the Radio Demon to play a few for the circus. In three weeks the caravan goes north to Pandemonium, and I’ll split off and go east.” Then he snickered. “I even got a few concessions. ‘It’s a long trip, and the Radio Demon’s a dangerous guy,’ I told him. ‘I won’t go unless you waive the deadline and let me bring a bodyguard.’ So now I’ve got tickets for two. What do you say?”

Clare opened his mouth, ready to blurt out a yes, then closed it. Nick was offering a whole new life, even if it was in the Radio Demon’s domain. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch.

“What’s in it for you?” he asked.

“I told you. A bodyguard,” Nick said, but Clare stared at him until he sighed and went on. “You’ve been saving up, right? I’ll get you out of here, so let me room with you when you get a place. How about it?”

All things considered, it’d be a small price to pay. “You’ll have to be a proper roommate. No holding this over my head. Make a mess, and I reserve the right to kick you out.”

Nick chuckled and nodded. “Sure, sure. You do the dusting, I’ll do the sweeping. I’ll put it in writing if you want, so long as that’s a yes.”

“It’s a, ‘When are we leaving?’” Clare said, and the two laughed into the morning breeze.

“We’ll follow the caravan for the first few days,” Nick said eventually. “But when we leave, make sure you take anything you’ll miss. Your contract’s not void. It’s only a loophole. The moment you step foot back in the circus, you can go right ahead and assume Azarrien won’t ever let you go again.”

* * *

In his travels with the circus, Clare had learned what to look for when he entered a new domain. There was always the usual mess, but no two territories were ever quite the same. A couple glances down a few back alleys could tell a sinner plenty about the area. How much garbage, how much sick or blood. How much of the litter was bottles, needles, cigarette butts, or condoms, and how far each of them trailed out of the alleys into the main streets.

But the Radio Demon’s territory was like nothing Clare had ever seen.

“Don’t stare,” Nick hissed in his ear, and Clare forced himself to look straight forward, averting his eyes from the mauling across the street. A pair of demons were out on a stroll on the sidewalk ahead. One of them caught his gaze, and Clare searched for anything else to look at, settling eventually on Nick.

 _“They_ were staring,” he hissed back.

“Yeah, and they wanted to see it, not like your wide-eyed, clueless ass. Now get over yourself before they see an easy mark. You’ve seen plenty of blood before.”

He had, but never on the streets. Not like this. This type of violence belonged in basements or back alleys, somewhere people wouldn’t notice the screams. Not because they’d try to stop it—not in Hell—but so the perpetrators wouldn’t get anyone yelling at them to keep it down before they got shot.

Clare should’ve realized it earlier. Of course it wouldn’t just be revolutionaries drawn here. It’d be the sadists who’d come to watch the show and start a few of their own. No wonder the blood was the only mess. Nobody would risk hanging around for anything else.

“Sorry,” Clare muttered habitually as his elbow bumped another in his distraction, then he froze as his tail bristled and fur stood on end. Reluctantly he turned to face a mouth bristling with sharp teeth.

But the crocodile demon only chuckled and tipped his hat. “Oh no, _I’m_ sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going. Have a good day.” The demon turned around and walked on to join his buddy, leaving Clare bewildered until Nick pulled on his arm.

“If you’re done making friends, this looks promising,” he said, pointing to a clean looking apartment building with a barred front door. It took some knocking and waving to get the attention of a centipede demon smoking in the foyer.

“What?” she said as she opened the door, her voice raspy and full of odd clicks.

“Any vacancies?” Nick asked.

The woman looked between the two, their travel-stained clothes, and their barely existent belongings. Clare carried a small suitcase, and Nick had his radio in a box. It was just enough to know they weren’t newly arrived, at least not to Hell in general.

“There’s 307 if you need two rooms, or else. . . hm. . .”

Her legs twitched and tapped against the floor in thought, but Nick saved her the trouble. “We’ll take it,” he said, and her mouth widened in what might have been a smile.

“Great. That’s forty bucks a month, and—“

 _“Forty?”_ Nick said, almost dropping his radio in his outrage. “Who’re we paying? The Radio Demon booted out the old landlord!”

Whether her irritation was at Nick’s outburst or at being interrupted, the woman’s voice was cold and full of chitters. "That’s right, so I did you a favor and took the rent out. If you think you’re too good to pay _taxes_ , you can take it up with the Big Guy yourself.” She reared back, raising rows of legs in the air and looking down on them from above. “Now I don't know what shithole you pulled yourselves out of, but around here we have rules. If you’re gonna piss off the Radio Demon, you don’t stick the rest of us in the crossfire. Forty bucks a month! I want to see it by Monday! And rule number _two_ is you pay your fucking cleaner! That’s me, and it’s another five. His Lordship tears down anything he thinks is an eyesore, and I’ll kill you myself if you make a mess where he can see it!"

Nick was still fuming even as Clare sighed and took out his wallet. He pulled out a few bills, then slipped them in his pocket. "I want to see the place first,” he said, then tacked on a hesitant question. “Do we have to call him that? ‘His Lordship?'"

The woman gave him an incredulous look but dropped back down to eye level. "What? They don't have sarcasm where you're from? You'd better pull your head from out of your ass, pal. Simpletons don't live long around here." Then she shrugged and let out a chatter that was almost a laugh. "The name’s Jan. You see that board there? Pay your dues, and your names won’t end up on it. You won't have to worry about living long if they do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, the OC-focused, worldbuilding-heavy prequel that nobody asked for, take two! Now with more OCs!
> 
> To anyone who got this far despite the premise, thank you for indulging my impulsive bullshit. Feel free to drop a comment on how if I'm going to be writing so many new characters and settings I might as well do it in an original novel. Or, you know, anything else you feel like saying.


	2. Beautiful Things

As a rule, sinners didn’t talk about their past lives. Not because it was a faux pas—the concept barely existed in Hell—but because no one asked and for good reason. It only took one, maybe two punches to the face to learn that the past was a minefield, but it didn’t pay to start fights with a roommate, and it wasn’t long before curiosity overcame caution.

Nick turned out to be short for Nikolai. He didn’t share his last name. Clare was a stage name picked up in Hell, Caeden an old friend’s name chosen for the alliteration but that never managed to feel quite his.

“So that’s why you go by your last name, even though it’s a girl’s,” Nick said and took another sip of his beer. “No one’s looking for you then?”

If he hadn’t been drunk before, Nick certainly was now. They may have been friends and roommates, but family was the taboo of taboos. Family either ended up in the other place, never to be seen again, or were more than likely part of the spiral that dragged a sinner to Hell in the first place.

Clare grumbled but answered anyway, his tongue loosened by a few beers of his own. “I hope not. I never knew my dad, and mom was. . . well, she was a real saint. The only one who’d look for me’s my sister, but she’s still alive up there. I just hope she remembers mom enough to follow her.”

It would’ve been fair to return the question, but before Clare could bring himself to do it, Nick volunteered. “Good, good for them! Family’s overrated. Mine cut ties when I told them who I voted for, and good riddance. Nationalist swine. May we never have the bad luck to run into them down here!” He raised his bottle in a toast, then chugged it down when Clare halfheartedly followed. “Need another?” he asked as he twisted the cap off a new one.

Clare gave his bottle a swing. Still half full. “Nah.”

“Come on, it’s my treat! A toast to your new job! Maybe we can get some real furniture in here, huh?”

Clare sighed. “My job was the first thing we toasted.” Then he sighed again as he looked around the room. Nick had a point. They had a couch, one too unwieldy for the old owners to take with them and too tattered for anyone to bother looting from the empty apartment. They had a mattress they’d found leaning against a wall, a hammock fashioned from an old tarp, and a wooden crate to set the radio on. That was it.

Nick clinked their bottles together anyway. “Then we’ll toast again! My friend, you’re moving up in the world!” He took a long sip and paused with a considering look on his face. “You are moving up, right? Even stagehand’s got to be better than that nightmare circus.”

It was, by a long shot. The work was familiar and comforting, the theater a welcome reminder of Clare’s old life. He had a wage again, a proper one without massive cuts for room and board and travel expenses.

It had seemed a good deal when he’d first arrived in Hell. No need to worry about food and shelter, just make like any outcast and run away with the circus. He’d signed before he’d learned the truth of it, before he’d had a chance to realize Hell was even less forgiving than the living world. But Nick was smarter than that, and he’d been in Hell for months before he joined.

It was almost as dangerous to ask about a sinner’s past in Hell as before it, but Clare took a deep breath and did it anyway. “Yeah, that place is a hell of its own. So how’d you get stuck there?”

For the first time that night, Nick seemed reluctant to answer. Eventually, he muttered it quietly under his breath. “Took a bad loan when I got here, and the guy sold my debt to Azarrien for a favor. I worked my ass off to pay it back in time, but I still had to sign on. I’m just glad he needed a sound guy, so I never had to go up.”

Clare let out a sympathetic grumble, and the two finished their drinks in silence before turning in for the night.

* * *

The theater stage was smooth and sturdy under Clare’s feet as he glided across it. The dance was an old one from his human life, one he’d practiced in front of trainers and other students, but never in front of a real crowd. That wouldn’t change now. The theater was quiet, the seats all empty, but that didn’t matter with a real stage under his feet again.

It felt nothing like the packed dirt of circus rings or the thin plywood of collapsible stages. This was thick, solid wood, dark-stained and polished and without so much as an inch of give. Clare spun, jumped, and landed on a trapdoor, and the only sign it was there at all was the hollow thump as his feet hit the ground.

He’d almost given up hope of standing here again, no matter what he’d seen in his afterlight. Hell wasn’t a place for the beautiful, not unless it was protected.

But that was just it. Whatever his faults, the Radio Demon had made the consequences of his displeasure abundantly clear. The territory he’d claimed was small, but it was a stable island in a sea of turf wars, a beacon of light in the chaos that remained of the old overlord’s territory.

It had taken months for the fighting to get into full swing. Everyone had assumed it’d be a simple change of ownership. Maybe a few border skirmishes to test Alastor’s claim, but nothing serious. Then he’d stopped accepting taxes from anything outside a mile’s radius of his radio tower, and everyone knew what that meant. No taxes, no protection.

Clare heard the stories from his coworkers. Some of them had packed up and moved away for good. Others, at Clare’s suggestion, had moved closer.

“It’s a bit chaotic,” he’d said, “but you won’t get this sort of opportunity anywhere else.” The words were something of an understatement, on both counts.

Alastor’s territory was as dangerous as ever, but only to those who didn’t know how to live in it. It had taken Clare months to learn—months of embracing his catlike nature and traveling by rooftop until he realized it wasn’t worth the hassle. People here were violent but not the fly-off-the-handle, psychotic sort of violent, despite Alastor’s reputation. They learned quickly that the fastest way to get killed was to offend a killer, and the fastest way to do that was to make a loud, obnoxious show of attacking someone.

No, the violence here was something more orderly—not planned per se, but not unprovoked. After the first month, Clare could feel his ears twitching at the sound of it, the subliminally dangerous note to the voices of demons looking for any excuse to let loose. Clare learned to stay calm when he heard it—to look forward, keep walking, and give them a polite nod and, “How do you do?” as he passed. He learned, the one time it hadn’t worked, to let his reflexes duck him under the blow and pull him into a sprint.

And still he had no regrets. It was all worth it to be working in entertainment again—proper entertainment that didn’t rely on spectacle, with actors and stories and venues built to last. There was an orchestra pit below the stage, not just old recordings of Thunder and Blazes. Beyond that were rows of upholstered seating and carpeted aisles and theater boxes. No standing room in front of folding bleachers. All of it was new and clean and simply but carefully built, and it was only possible here.

“All paid for with tax money,” Clare’s boss said in his hiring interview. “Seems our Good Patron’s got a soft spot for entertainment. There’s a film theater going up a block away. Plus all the clubs and those hole in the wall joints. These days you just say the magic word and you get a permit and a budget.”

Clare wasn’t sure if the magic word was ‘stage’ or ‘theater’ or maybe even just ‘show.’ He hadn’t asked at the time, but he did bring it up when he got home. Nick didn’t have an answer for that one, but he did have an explanation.

“The guy’s rich. His people looted the old overlord’s manor—or what’s left of it anyway—and he’s got ad revenue from his stations. People are begging him to take their money, but he’s already got more than he knows what to do with.”

“So he’s handing it out?” Clare asked.

Nick curled up with a laugh. “Ha! You think he’d bother? Nah, he’s got accountants handing it out for him. As long as he’s happy they keep their heads, and it looks like the Radio Demon was a real socialite back in life. Figures.” Then he sighed. “At least they’re paying people properly, enough to go out and see the shows their taxes are paying for.”

Clare had nodded along in wordless agreement. He’d expected the job to be a foot in the door, a small bit of income he’d have to supplement on the streets, just like in life. He didn’t expect to check his balance at the end of the week and realize he’d come out in the green. It was enough to splurge a bit, to go out, see a show or two, and marvel at streets in Hell laced with so many billboards and neon signs. It almost felt like being alive again.

And for a moment he thought he’d lost it all.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A deep voice rang through the theater, and Clare froze mid-twirl. He wasn’t supposed to be on stage. His job was on the catwalks, managing the lighting and rigging, but just for today, he’d rushed to finish his work early. The stage would be empty, he knew, and— “The meeting started half an hour ago!” the voice shouted. “Get your ass backstage or—“

Meeting. The word was enough for Clare to relax enough to drop his pose and stand up straight, enough to interrupt the man. “It’s not my meeting. I’m not an actor.”

“Oh? Then what are you doing here?”

Clare rushed to think of an excuse. “I’m on the lighting team. I was just, uh, checking if there was any glare. From the spotlights.”

There was, and it was almost blinding as usual. Clare couldn’t see the man at all amid the darkened seating, but the laugh let him know he was safe.

“The lighting team? I’m hosting auditions for a musical next Friday. If you act half as well as you dance, you should stay on the stage. And if not, not all the parts have lines. You’d still be in the show, and you might learn a thing or two.”

The man finally stepped close enough to the stage to be seen, and Clare would have recognized that literal crocodile grin anywhere. He’d seen it enough times from above. It belonged to one of the first directors to see the signs and move to Alastor’s territory, and by most accounts the best of them, and here he was inviting Clare to an audition. This truly was a land of opportunity.

It was an almost bittersweet thought. It was incredible, so close to perfect, but nothing in Hell ever could be. Clare’s coworkers, the ones that moved away, had told him he was mad. The threat of death and disembowelment would be an immediate deal-breaker to anyone sane. His time in the circus broke him, they said, desensitized him to death and violence. Clare hadn’t bothered arguing, and in a way they were right.

He wasn’t afraid of pain anymore, not really. He only felt the fear of it in the vague, instinctive sense that made him dodge attacks and catch himself when he fell. A preference for avoiding pain, he thought, not a dread of it. He’d spent too long making a living off taking falls for fear of pain to have a hold on him. No matter how much it hurt, here in Hell everything would heal eventually, if only so it could break again later.

No, Clare didn’t fear violence, but the sight never failed to fill him with revulsion. The blood spatter amidst the neon, the dried brown already stained so deep in the concrete that the area had an even redder cast than the rest of Hell. It was all the best of humanity together with all the worst—a love of art and beauty unabashedly layered with joy at others’ suffering. It was Hell’s take on his old dreams of Broadway, a perverse mimicry of something wonderful, and Clare hated it more than anything.

* * *

The first time Nick came home covered in cuts and bruises, Clare had been worried, but Nick waved him off. “Armadillo demon,” he’d said. “They can’t do much if I curl up, but it takes some of them a while to figure it out.”

The cuts had healed quickly enough, and the bruises were already old shades of purple and brown. By midnight Nick was back in good spirits, listening to a talk show and making the usual snide comments. It was the same the next time, and it wasn’t long before Clare learned to give Nick a quick once-over and either throw a towel on the couch or throw him a beer.

Today though, Nick was first to get home and throw Clare a cold one. “How was the rehearsal?” he asked, and Clare shook his head.

“Fine, but what happened to you? I thought you weren’t soapboxing today.”

A quiz show was playing, and Nick paused to catch one of the answers before explaining the gash on his arm. “I haven’t been soapboxing for weeks. It won’t work here. You can’t start a revolution unless people are starving, so we’ve been looking for places to campaign. The meeting got crashed, but I think everyone made it out.”

“Hm,” Clare muttered as he dropped down on the couch beside him. “Does that mean you’re moving out?”

Nick let out a sharp breath that might have been a laugh or a scoff. “What? So glad to see the back of me?”

“No! It’s. . .” Clare took a deep breath before going on quietly. “This whole setup, living with someone and all . . . it almost reminds me of before. In New York, I mean. With my sister, except she could cook more than eggs.” Clare finished with a strained laugh that didn’t do anything to cut the tension.

It was rare for sinners to bring up the past, rarer still to reminisce about the good rather than complain about the bad. Silence fell, and the two listened to the quiz show until an ad break came on and Nick pulled himself gingerly to his feet.

“Here’s a heads up, then. I’m gonna be going out more. Traveling, visiting places, probably for a few days at a time.” Then he let out a chuckle. “But don’t get too sappy. This area’s still our base. We’ve got a press for fliers and everything. I might be off campaigning, but my room better be here when I get back, you hear?”

“That was the deal,” Clare said with a smile. “Need a shoulder?”

Nick shook his head. “Nah, I’m gonna go sleep this off,” he started, just as a familiar crackling announced a change in the broadcast. “Never mind,” Nick said, then flopped back on the couch as a new voice filled the room.

_ Good evening, dear listeners. Pardon the interruption, but I’m afraid I have an unfortunate announcement to make. Tonight’s planned airing of Dining with Damien will be delayed until further notice, as the poor star of the show was waylaid barely a block from the station! Any comments, old pal? _

The broadcast was silent for a few seconds, as long a pause as Alastor ever allowed.

_ None? Dear me, he looks to be out cold. Unless. . . ah! No pulse! It seems we have a murder on our hands! Lucky for you, my dear audience, I know a thing or two about homicide investigations, and we have before us a witness! I stumbled upon this man eagerly searching poor Damien for any unbroken bones. Now, would you care to introduce yourself? _

“Oh. Another execution.” Clare frowned but settled in for the show anyway. There wasn’t much else to do unless he wanted to read the news, and that wouldn’t be any better. Nick, though, was as ever paying rapt attention, and Clare never understood why. “You’re not a sadist, Nick. Are you pretending to be a fan just because he’s paying us well?”

Nick just rolled his eyes. “I already told you,  _ he’s _ not paying you. He doesn’t care about money. Hell, I bet he barely gives a damn about anything here except as a buffer around his precious station. He might make the rules, but he doesn’t rule the place, and that’s why it works.”

“Huh? That’s why what—?” Clare started, but Nick shushed him when the Radio Demon’s voice came back on.

_ A bold claim! You say the victim was dead when you got here? Pray tell then, why was it that I found you kicking his corpse, hm? _

_ “Well, I, uh, recognized the guy, yeah? He decked me at the bar a couple weeks back, so I thought I’d give him a little something extra to heal from. But I didn’t kill him, I swear!” _

_ I’ll be the judge of that, but far be it from me to be the jury too! I’d been hoping to save this for a special occasion, but let’s call this a test run. How about we have some audience participation? Pay attention now! Just for today, all you listeners will have a chance to cast your votes! _

“Since when was this a trial?” Clare started, but Nick waved for him to be quiet.

_ You’ve heard the witness’s testimony and the suspect’s defense—and both at the same time too! My, isn’t this court efficient! Now it’s time for you to decide his fate, so listen carefully. Members of the jury, if you believe this man here is guilty of murder, kindly turn off your radios before the minute is up. _

“What’s he doing?” Nick muttered as the sound of elevator music filled the room and Clare got up to his feet. Then, louder, “What are  _ you _ doing? Don’t you dare touch it!”

Clare paused with his finger on the switch. “He’s guilty. I’m voting.” Not to mention all the other benefits of turning the radio off. He wouldn’t have to hear the execution for one. He could sit in silence, pondering the horrifying revelation that the Radio Demon might know they were listening.

“He’s guilty?” Nick asked. “You’re sure?” Clare was ready to explain what he’d heard—the wobble in the man’s voice that was more than terror at meeting the Radio Demon—but Nick shook his head. “Never mind. Just don’t turn it off. There’s no point, and I want to know what happens next.”

“What do you mean?” Clare said.

“It’s not an even choice. Do something or do nothing? People are going to leave their radios on just ‘cause they won’t bother getting up, but why’d he skew the verdict toward innocent? Why didn’t he make guilty the default?”

It was a valid question, good enough to make Clare hesitate until the elevator music ended with a quick set of chords.

_ We’re back, good listeners, and thank you for your patience! The votes have been tallied, and the verdict is. . .not guilty! Hm, I don’t know if I’d agree, but it seems you, sir, have been found innocent of murder by a jury of your peers! Congratulations! _

There was a burst of party horns and applause that turned ominous as the Radio Demon started talking over it.

_ But there’s still the matter of you kicking poor Damien while he was down. You said in your testimony that you recognized him. You must have known who he was, then. _

_ “Um, yeah. Met him in a bar last week.” _

_ Then you knew he was contracted? _

_ “He was—“ _

_ And not just anyone’s contractee, but mine! Now, I’ll pardon murder. This is Hell after all! But mauling a man you barely know lying dead on the street? Now that’s sorry enough that I’d simply have to host a more entertaining show to compensate. And if you  _ did  _ know him well enough to know he was my contractee? My friend, that’s a special kind of stupid. So which is it? _

Moments like these were all the proof needed to know Alastor was a gleeful sadist. Clare could almost imagine it. The shadowy, looming presence he’d only seen in warning posters. The questions that had no right answer. Clare shook his head and flipped off the radio before Alastor could add silence on air to the man’s list of crimes. He’d turned and made it halfway to his room before Nick’s voice stopped him.

“Well, that answers my question. Did you still want me to answer yours?”

Clare had already forgotten what they were, but he looked over and raised a brow anyway.

“’Since when was it a trial?’” Nick quoted. “It’s always been a trial. Haven’t you noticed? He doesn’t kill people randomly, not except the ones that get caught in the crossfire. He always waits for someone to break his rules, and that’s the point.”

“The point of what?”

“The point of  _ everything _ Clare! You want to know why you’re paid well? There’s no one stealing it from you since they’re too terrified of the guy to go through with it! That’s what happens when the people running the place have the fear of God in them! They can’t act in self-interest. They have to follow the law. The only shame’s that our laws are the Radio Demon’s whims and not something more useful.”

* * *

Nick’s words kept echoing through Clare’s head in the coming weeks, every time he stepped outside to see the red-stained sidewalks and neon lights. There was a bitter, undeniable truth to them. In this place, one couldn’t exist without the other. In Hell, there was nothing beautiful unless it was defended, and the only ones with the power to defend were monsters.

But those thoughts left Clare’s mind in the echoing halls of the theater. It was a place at turns solemn and brimming with emotion. Sometimes it was quiet, and Clare’s voice was uncomfortably loud in the hall’s acoustics. Other times the orchestra was in practice, and its rooms resonated with sound.

The irony was that his musical was a violent one, written in Hell for an audience of demons. It featured betrayal, feuding families, war, and a variety of brutal murders. Something for everyone to enjoy. Clare’s first on-stage appearance was to be as a minor flashback character in the first act, one who didn’t have any lines but did get to stab his rival through the heart while the narrator spoke. The man who kicked the whole bloody story off. What an honor.

Clare’s rival and fellow novice actor, a many-eyed demon by the name of Arjun, had spent his breaks commiserating with him about it. “At least you’re the one doing the stabbing. And you get a dance number! I just have to lay there dead. No way I’ll get noticed from that.” Clare just sighed and nodded along. There was no point in brooding about it, not when it was only an act.

The show was a bloody one, but the violence was fake. A performance. Theater was an outlet here just as much as it had been in the human world. It was a place for demons to satisfy their bloodlust without having to take to the streets. Its walls and seats and carpets were even redder than the sidewalks, but it was the velvet-red of opening curtains, not the rust-red of blood.

Clare stared at those curtains to calm his nerves as the orchestra struck up a foreboding tune. He and Arjun were on first, and Clare couldn’t stop his hands from flitting across his costume to make sure everything was in place. Pouch, check. Deed, check. Prop dagger, check. He didn’t have any lines, he reminded himself. This was only dance, and he’d been dancing even before his death. Then the curtains raised, and he twirled his way to the middle of the stage to meet Arjun, nothing but well-rehearsed moves and muscle memory.

The scene started off without a hitch. Clare presented the deed, Arjun tore it in half, and Clare held his knife out for the audience to see the glint. He waited for his cue, but the only sound was the lingering shriek of a violin as the orchestra went silent. Clare only had a second for nightmare scenarios to flash through his mind before the worst of them laid a hand on his shoulder.

"That isn’t how you hold a knife, dear," a voice sang in his ear, distorted and harsh with static. The hand on his shoulder slid down his arm as another reached around his side. The two met at Clare’s wrist and started making adjustments. They shifted his grip, twisted the knife a few degrees, and angled his hand forward until the point aimed at Arjun's chest. A foot nudged Clare's until they were shoulder-width apart, less a pose than a combat stance. The voice hummed in his ear again. "Ahh, there’s your problem."

The dagger in Clare's hand warped, and it was all he could do to keep his new grip and not drop it. It was heavier now—real, sharp steel reaching deep into the haft. No hollow. No springs. Clare clutched it like a lifeline as his vision unfocused. He locked his knees so they wouldn't collapse even as his head felt light from breathing too fast and too shallow. The demon behind him moved closer, pressing against his spine and disturbing the hair lining Clare’s ear with his breath.

"That's more like it. Now the show can go on."

Clare couldn't move his hand forward, so the demon’s moved it for him. Bright red filled his vision—the bag of paint splitting open at the slightest touch of the blade—and still his hand inched forward. Clare looked up, desperately searching for anything else to stare at, and Arjun's eyes resolved into focus. They darted left then flicked back to meet Clare’s. Better to look into a friend's eyes than those of the demon guiding his hands. Clare wondered if Arjun knew he was softly shaking his head, _ no, no. _

Those eyes began to water as the knife met resistance, layers of padding behind packs of stage blood. It cut through them like butter, and Arjun’s eyes went wide then scrunched tight with pain. Still Arjun didn't move away, even as the blade slid between his ribs. It was almost up to its hilt before he finally coughed, staggered, and fell choking on his own blood. The knife jerked out of Clare's hand, and for a long moment, the only sounds were Clare’s frantic gasps and Arjun's ragged ones.

It took the orchestra starting up again for Clare to realize the presence at his back was gone. Its touch lingered like burns along his arms. Its voice echoed through his head like an empty theater, and Clare felt himself move through his choreography like a doll. "Now the show can go on," the voice had said.  _ The show must go on. _

He'd been here before. He'd seen broken bodies. He'd seen actors with twisted limbs lying in pools of their own blood, screaming their lungs out to make their performance heard over the roar of the crowd. He’d been one of them.

This was almost dignified by contrast. Arjun was silent. The crowd was silent. Clare's dance took him across the pooling blood, and as it soaked into his shoes he worried more about slipping than the spiraling footprints he left across the stage.

He'd been here before, and Clare didn't slip. He changed his shoes in the intermission, the blood was mopped off the stage before the next act, and the crowd clapped louder than he'd ever heard when the cast, minus a few, took their bow. It was only when the show was done and he was safely alone backstage that he sank to his knees and gasped out a sob.

He'd been here before and known the feeling of life leaving a body. He'd thought he was done. No more death, no more bloodsport. No more pain, only performance. Naïve, so naïve, to think he could find peace here. Not just in Hell, but on the doorstep of the Radio Demon himself.


	3. Bad Taste

The rest of the cast switched over to real weapons, or at least the actors that could. Guns weren’t an option with the acoustics of the theater, but the knives and swords and bayonets were all sharpened steel, shined to a polish to glint in the spotlight. Only Clare stubbornly held on to his prop knife despite his colleagues’ warnings.

“He’ll kill you, Clare!”

Clare shrugged. “Then I’ll die.”

“After meeting the Radio Demon in person? You’re a braver man than I,” the lead actor said, layering the words with unspoken meaning. _You’re either suicidal or an idiot._

“That’s exactly why,” Clare said. “It’s because I met him. I know the stance now, and you can bet I won’t ever forget it.”

It wasn’t bravery either. Clare could feel dread turning his stomach worse than on opening night. He felt sick from it, sick from knowing he was inviting his own death, but it was only pain. It’d be better than causing Arjun’s again. It was a sheer stubbornness Clare didn’t know he had in him, definitely closer to idiocy than bravery, he was forced to admit.

But Arjun was one of the few bit actors to stick around for the second showing, and the relief he tried to conceal was enough to know Clare had made the right choice. “It’s like you said, Clare. It’s only pain, and directors want to see commitment.” Arjun said it through a forced smile, then muttered at the end, “But thanks.”

This was Hell though, and it wasn’t for Arjun’s sake that Clare took a combat stance and stabbed him with a retractable prop knife. The grip was just as he’d been shown, the thrust just hard enough to tear the bags of stage blood and stop at the padding. The paint didn’t spread as far as last night’s blood, and Clare didn’t have to change his shoes before heading backstage and finding a quiet hallway to close his eyes.

It wasn’t long before he heard it. The soft hiss of static over the muted echoes of the orchestra. “The show’s not over yet,” Clare said.

“No, it’s not, but I’ve already seen the rest.” The Radio Demon’s voice was as gleeful as ever, and Clare’s shoulders sagged in relief. At least he hadn’t addressed an invisible audience. At least it wouldn’t be a broadcast.

Clare sighed and opened his eyes, and for a moment he was almost confused. The Radio Demon was shockingly ordinary—almost human if not for the blood-red eyes and shark-toothed grin. He was wearing a suit and a monocle of all things, and his smile wasn’t sinister but bright and cheerful. Despite that, he was unmistakable. There was an air around him like he owned the room and everything in it, the easy confidence of absolute control.

“It was a wonderful act,” Alastor went on. “Convincing as they come. It’d take an expert to see the flaws.” It was only when the dagger vanished out of Clare’s hands that he noticed he’d still been holding on to it. The Radio Demon pushed down on the point, pressing the blade halfway into the hilt. “See? No blood except on the tip, and then there’s the smell.” He let the knife spring back, touched a red-stained finger to his tongue, and put on a half-smile, half-grimace. “Cheap paint. Barely a step above dirt.”

He tossed the dagger back, and Clare barely noticed the change in time to save his hand. He pulled away and flinched to the side, just far enough for it to miss him, bounce off the wall, and bury itself point-down in the floor. It was just an illusion, Clare knew. It’d go back to being a prop the moment Alastor left, but illusions could still hurt. They were still sharp. Clare had learned that lesson well.

But there had to be a reason Alastor had thrown the dagger, and Clare leaned over to pick it up. His hand wrapped around the grip and yanked it out of the wood, just in time to hear footsteps and dodge a slash aimed straight at his throat. He ducked the follow-up and darted a few steps back, raising the dagger in defense.

“There you go!” the Radio Demon said. He had his own knife in hand now, smaller than Clare’s dagger but sharp and gleaming as he thrust it forward. “There’s more than one way to make a show authentic! This is more interesting, but what’s stopping you from taking the easy way out, hm? Don’t tell me I’ve found the one compassionate soul in Hell.”

He punctuated every few words with another attack, and only quick reflexes kept Clare out of the way of the blade. The rest of him was too shocked to do more than move. It was all too sudden. Too incongruous. The Radio Demon was wearing a suit and attacking him with a knife, and he was far better at it than he had any right to be. He knew his reach and didn’t hesitate, and Clare would be dead a dozen times over if he so much as blinked. It was moments until he realized he’d been asked a question.

“I don’t—” Clare ducked a cut. “—want to. It’s repulsive.”

Shark-like had been the perfect word for that grin. It was wider than ever now, chasing the scent of blood in the water. “Repulsive? What, murder?”

Clare managed a nod between dodges, keenly aware that he was backing down the end of the hallway. Murder and everything about it. The feeling of a life leaving a body. The visceral understanding that in the end, a person was only a heavy lump of flesh. Better to die than feel it again.

“Ha! I’ve had people telling me that my whole life.” Alastor aimed a slash at Clare’s right, then twisted the knife when Clare blocked. The blade arced around the guard toward Clare’s wrist, and Clare had to drop his dagger and pull away. Another slash forced him to step back, and that was it. His shoulders were against a wall, a blade was at his throat, and the Radio Demon was smiling down at him, wide-eyed and delighted. “I always assume they’re missing the appeal. It’s a performative art, and people are so genuine in their last moments.”

Clare took that as his cue to breathe in as deeply as he could and lock eyes with the demon. He couldn’t manage the defiant look he wanted. Resignation and instinctive fear kept creeping in, and Clare hated that it was only proving Alastor’s point.

But Alastor pulled away and turned to walk back down the hall, twirling the knife between his fingers. “So who was it? Whose last moments left you with a bad taste?”

That wasn’t a simple question. Sinners didn’t ask about each other’s pasts and especially not about their damnations. Clare couldn’t even think of answering though, before the hallway around him shifted. The shadows darkened, and he jumped away as wiry black fingers pulled themselves free. But all the hand did was grab Clare’s dagger from where he dropped it and toss it forward in a lazy arc. Clare reached out, fumbled the catch, and had to stumble forward a few steps before he could grab the handle. It put him right back where he’d started, in the middle of the hallway, facing down death with only a dagger to defend himself.

At least Alastor wasn’t expecting an answer. “Hm. It wasn’t last night’s,” he mused as he launched the first attack. “That was an easy death. A clean cut, straight to the heart. It can’t have taken more than, oh, an hour for it to start beating again?” Alastor paused for a second, tapping his knife to his chin in thought. He raised a brow when Clare readjusted his stance without trying to take advantage. “Unless he was contracted? Ha, of course not! He was in the opening scene!”

“Actors can’t be—?” Clare started, then jumped back from the sudden swipe at his head.

"No, no. There’s nothing stopping you from making deals, but _contractees_ can't be actors.” The fight started in earnest again, and Clare found himself struggling not to step back. He could feel the wall close behind him, brushing against his flicking tail, and it was all he could do to dodge and block without giving ground. “At least not good ones,” Alastor went on. “I've heard some overlords swear by contracted dance troupes, but I find they lack a certain _joie de vivre._ Technique can only take you so far without passion behind it, isn't that right?"

As if to prove a point, Alastor aimed another swing at Clare’s right, hard enough to send Clare’s dagger flying when he blocked. The shock sent lightning down Clare’s arm, and with no way to defend and nowhere to go, he found himself pinned against the wall again.

“So who was it? Someone from an old life?”

This time the Radio demon pressed down. The knife slid across Clare’s throat with just enough pressure to break skin. Just enough to sting, but obviously and deliberately not fatal. What stung more was that Clare couldn’t keep the emotions off his face. He was an actor, even if he was inexperienced. He could angle his brows and set his mouth in a line, but his nose wrinkled in anger before he could stop it—anger at how far the Radio Demon was pushing and anger that he was right.

Alastor’s eyes narrowed, but his grin only widened. “I thought so. Now then, that was strike two. This time do try and put up a fight.”

This time when the shadow fetched Clare’s knife he was expecting it. His eyes followed the flip, and he caught it in midair and held it steady.

The memory of his first kill was one he didn’t want dragged up, and this demon had done it twice in as many days. Clare could feel remembered blood on his hands, some of it from his own split knuckles. He could see his sister’s face when he’d walked through the door, slack and bloodied as she drew ragged breaths between her lips, and the face of the man who'd done it. The rage was all-consuming, and Clare hated, hated, _hated_ it. Mom always said to keep his temper in check, but it was Jule who’d always been there—Jule who’d snapped him out of it when it got bad. She hadn’t stopped him then, and she couldn’t stop him now.

It was suicidal—blatantly, obviously suicidal—but Clare charged forward anyway. It was fight or die, and he knew he was fast. He’d been keeping up with the Radio Demon before, and he’d only lost because he ran out of room. That wouldn’t matter if he was on the offensive.

But Alastor matched with a counter that forced Clare to step back, dodged the next slash by an inch, and blocked the third with ease. “You know,” he said, “the point of small weapons is to not telegraph your every move.”

Clare’s hand ached from the impact, but he thrust the dagger forward anyway, only for claws to wrap around his wrist. The hold was like iron, barely budging an inch when Clare jerked his hand back.

“And your grip is much too tight. It’s a dagger, not a club. And even if it was. . .”

The Radio Demon pulled his hand back, and his fingers came away red. Only then did Clare notice the pain—the cuts on his hands where his claws were digging into his palms. Even if it was a club, clenching his fists in blind fury would do him no good. Even if he won he’d always be worse off in the end. Always. It happened last time, and it was happening again.

He couldn’t win. There was no doubt anymore. Clare may have been faster, but Alastor was poised to parry before Clare even knew where he was attacking. Alastor turned the tide just as easily, stepping back from a slash, weaving to the side, and forcing Clare to the wall of the narrow hallway.

But Clare knew what was coming this time, and he raised the point of his dagger just as the knife settled against his throat. He couldn’t win, but he could force a draw, even if it got him killed. Echoes of old anger guided the dagger to Alastor’s ribs, but Clare’s arm tensed just before the blade could sink in.

It was that same revulsion again—that disgust at being no better and the sorrow on his sister’s face when she finally woke up. It was just a memory, but it cut through the anger like diamond through glass, nothing but sharp, painful edges. Even if he did hurt the Radio Demon, he’d heal faster than any sinner, and Clare would have blood on his hands again. What for? What good would it do if he was about to die anyway?

But he didn’t die. It was Clare’s third strike, but the knife at his neck only pressed deep enough to leave a scratch. The Radio Demon’s eyes traced the cut as if hungry for more, but when he looked back up to Clare’s face it was with a delighted grin.

“Well this has been fun,” he said. “It’s good to know I’m not entirely out of practice. Not much need for knives in Hell, you see.” Alastor flashed the claws on his off hand, and Clare could have sworn the shadows danced at the gesture. Then he leaned forward, and Clare didn’t know what he was meant to do. Alastor had to feel the dagger at his chest, the point of it just a flinch away from cutting through cloth and skin. He was allowing it. In an instant he could dismiss the illusion and turn it back to a harmless prop, but he didn’t.

It was uncertainty more than anything else that held Clare still. His eyes flicked up and down until a chuckle from Alastor forced him to realize the truth. It was all another game, or a test maybe. Clare couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he’d lost or passed, but there was one thing he did know. The confusion written all over his face was exactly what had the Radio Demon so amused.

“And as for you,” he said, “not bad for your first time. A bit more practice will do you wonders! What do you say? Same time next week, or would Tuesday be better?”

Once again Clare didn’t know how to respond. Would a no mean death? How did one reject knife lessons from a serial murderer holding a blade to their throat? One that had apparently taken a liking, judging by the fact that he wasn’t already dead or well on their way. One who seemed genuinely thrilled at the idea. Alastor’s eyes were wide and bright and almost glowing, and maybe it was just adrenaline, but that enthusiasm felt almost infectious. Clare didn’t want to know how much he was rationalizing when he finally decided, but if there was one thing he’d learned in the last months, it was that it didn’t pay to stand between the Radio Demon and what he wanted. Slowly, carefully to not cut himself against the knife, he gave a small nod.

“Splendid! Tuesday afternoon at the station, then! I’ll see you there!”

Without another word the Radio Demon turned and strolled back the way of the main hall, humming along with the distant orchestra. It was only after his coattails rounded the corner that Clare let out his breath and sank back against the wall. He was alive. He’d met the Radio Demon, defied him, lived through it, and come out with barely a scratch. That and the promise of a repeat, but he’d deal with that when the time came. The evening had given him enough to process.

For all the Radio Demon’s talk about being genuine in the face of death, his smile hadn’t so much as faltered, not even with a dagger at his chest. Maybe it was sheer nerve or faith in his power or indifference to anything less deadly than an angel. Maybe he’d known all along that Clare wouldn’t go through with it. The dagger in Clare’s hands had reverted to its true form, a harmless prop knife slowly dripping red paint. The symbolism wasn’t lost on him.

Or maybe, Clare thought as he sighed and let his head tip back against the bricks, maybe all of it was genuine. The smile, the posturing, the gestures he’d made time for even during the fight. Small nods and shakes of his head. Shrugs, glances, and fluid waves of his off hand. Maybe every inch of him, down to his bones, was a performance so natural it wasn’t even an act.

* * *

More than anything Clare wanted someone to talk to, but there was no one. His new friends were all in the theater, and they weren’t the sort to confide in. They might share their sympathies, but their eyes would tell it all. He’d brought this on himself. Chatting up a stranger at a bar wasn’t an option either. They’d get up and leave at the first mention of the Radio Demon. As for Nick, he was off on one of his multi-day tours of the Pentagram. He had been since yesterday.

“You’ll miss the premiere!” Clare had argued. “My debut!”

“You think your debut’s more important than the good of all sinners?” Nick said, then sighed and shook his head when Clare floundered for an answer. “Clare, it’s Hell. It’s fine to be selfish, but so’s everyone else. I’ve got things to do, and it’s not even your real debut. You said you were on stage before, right? The dancing thing when you were human?”

It wasn’t the same. Those hadn’t been real stages but small ones in dance halls and speakeasies. It didn’t take renown to get up on them, and you couldn’t expect to get much in turn. Theater was different, but Nick left anyway.

“I’ll be back by Tuesday at the soonest. Probably later,” he’d said. That figured.

There were three days left until the big one, and Clare expected to spend them feeling nervous. He expected tension to make him sick, keep him from eating, and stiffen his performance. Instead it was the opposite. Clare spent the days drifting, distant as if doom was already creeping up on him, gradually drawing him away from his life. He barely felt the claps on his back from his fellow actors, barely heard the cheers that he’d ticked off the Radio Demon and lived. They didn’t know.

It had been the same before his trial, days waiting in his cell for the moment his life would be as good as over. He’d spend the rest of it in prison, but he never expected to die in a car crash on the way to the courthouse.

That memory of his death was what finally made the nerves show up, but only for half an hour. Only for the short walk from home to the radio station at the heart of Alastor’s territory. The whole trip was spent jumping at the sound of cars driving too close to the sidewalk. Even in the lobby, he felt his tail bristle at the roar of an engine outside, but Clare shook his head and walked up to the front desk.

“I’m here to see the Radio Demon?”

The words came out a question, and the woman manning the desk looked up from her crossword with a blank stare. “Hallway on your right. If the Bossman wants to see you, you’ll find him. Or he’ll find you. One or the other.” She looked down and waved him off, and Clare started down the corridor wondering if that really was all he needed. Then the path took a left and another, and where the lobby should have been was yet more hallway. Magic. He might’ve guessed, but Clare had never seen anything like this. Illusions, yes, even ones so real they could cut, but nothing so obviously wrong, so bizarrely non-Euclidean.

It was minutes until he reached the end, a heavy set of wooden doors too ornate to suit the station’s modern style. Beyond them Clare found a room impossible to define. It had the center aisle of a church and rows of cushioned pews, but in raked seating sloping down to the front of the room. The walls were lined with columns and tall stained glass windows in red, gold, and white. Sunlight streamed through from both sides, illuminating depictions of skeletal deer. The sound of the door slamming behind Clare echoed off the vaulted ceilings, but at the center of it all was not an altar, but a stage. There Alastor stood, lazily flipping a knife through the air.

“Oh?” he said, and his voice echoed too, a dozen layers of it melding with the radio distortion. “You haven’t come prepared? Don’t tell me you forgot what the point of this was.” He shook his head in disappointment but beckoned Clare to the stage anyway.

Of course he did. The game wouldn’t end just because Clare forgot to bring a dagger. Today's meeting had layers—a lesson in knife fighting for authenticity’s sake and a lesson in consequences for defying the Radio demon too subtly to earn death. The second half had started already, and Clare dropped his shoulders and walked forward. “The prop’s not mine, and I don’t have a dagger.”

“You don’t cook?”

 _It’s women’s work,_ Clare almost said, but the disdain on the Radio Demon’s face stopped him. “Sometimes,” he said instead, “but a chef’s knife isn’t a dagger.” It didn’t have a guard, and it wasn’t double-edged, but the Radio Demon held his knife still until Clare realized the description matched.

“That never stopped me.”

Clare had no reply as he climbed the steps to the stage. Casual comments like those were the least of what made the Radio Demon so alien. This whole room—this whole scenario did it far better, but the comments were a reminder. Sinners didn’t talk about their sins, not unless they were pressed. They didn’t talk about their old lives. Too much to miss or too much to hate. Maybe it was different when they had the power to recreate the best of them here in Hell, one way or another. Clare looked around the room again, wondering how much of it was twisted memory. He barely turned around in time to catch the dagger thrown his way.

“Quick reflexes,” Alastor said as Clare debated taking a stance. In the end, he just shrugged.

“Cat demon.”

Wrong choice. His reflexes weren’t quick enough to dodge the next attack, a stab that left him staggering back clutching his shoulder. Blood seeped into the sleeve of his shirt and stained his palm when he pulled it away.

“They won’t do you a lick of good if you don’t know how to use them. Good move not wearing your costume today! It’d be such a shame to get it stained, but first, introductions! We’ve put them off too long already! Now, my name is Alastor, as I’m sure you already know.”

The Radio Demon completed the introduction with a small bow and a hand held out to shake. “Caeden—” Clare started, then nearly bit his tongue off when the handshake almost tore his arm from his shoulder.

“Well then, Caeden, what say we—“

“Clare,” he corrected automatically.

For a moment the Radio Demon was still, and in that moment he was more menacing than in all his wild gesturing.

“Hm?”

“My name,” Clare said hesitantly. “My stage name. Caeden Clare, but I prefer Clare. Caeden isn't mine yet.”

The moment dragged on as Alastor only tilted his head, then in an instant it broke. “Clare then,” he said and launched the first attack. “It does have a certain ring to it, but you said it yourself. It may be yours now, but it wasn’t when you got here. Keep your knife up.”

Clare was too busy backpedaling to reply. The stab at his throat was the reward for dropping his guard, but it barely nicked him. The Radio Demon went on, weaving attacks between his words as easily as afterthoughts.

“Oh, but you’re not alone, are you? So many sinners change their names when they fall, and it’s obvious why. Keep your knees bent. They don’t want their old names! Those names were for their old lives, but now they can be themselves without playing by society’s rules! Awfully nearsighted, don’t you think? All that time playing the part on the surface, only to end up down here anyway! What a waste. Wouldn’t all our lives have been that much more interesting if they’d been true to themselves in the first place? I for one certainly was.”

He ended the chain of attacks with a flourish that nicked Clare’s arm, then stepped back, idly raising the knife to his mouth. “I can believe that,” Clare said, not making the mistake again of dropping his stance. He’d heard the rumors, both from the newly dead and demons who’d been in the audience for his slaughters. A serial killer in life and in death, and if those words could be trusted, he’d been a cannibal in both as well.

Clare should have been afraid, he knew, but the fear wouldn’t come. The floating feeling was back, as if this room and this fight were no more than a dream. Or perhaps the rest of Clare’s life had been the dream, and all that was real was all he was seeing now. It certainly felt real enough.

“You’re not going to fight back?” the Radio Demon said, as if it were that easy. Any openings he had disappeared before Clare could step forward, but that was the goal all along. Going on the offensive left openings of Clare’s own, and Alastor was quick to take advantage. Shallow cuts soon lined Clare’s arms and chest, and despite them he found himself smiling.

The realization was bizarre, and Clare faltered just long enough to earn another cut across his side. “Stay focused,” Alastor laughed, overjoyed at the sight of blood. “What’s the point if you don’t learn anything? Now, where was I?”

It was the same schadenfreude that Clare had hated in the circus, but here it was different. It wasn’t crass, wasn’t a cheap excuse for a laugh. There was something so forthright and radiant about Alastor’s amusement that it was hard to remember to hate it.

And try as he might, Clare couldn't keep the realization from sinking in. Alastor cared. He truly cared about the violence as more than an excuse to look down on its victims, and he wasn't alone. His voice filled the room as he alternated attacks with speeches and anecdotes, slipping in an occasional piece of advice. Clare managed the odd comment or reaction, and that was all the Radio Demon seemed to want.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Clare knew what was happening. The dissociation of the last few days, the unreality of the moment, and the rush of adrenaline—all of it combined had left him light, susceptible, easy to influence. Like a paper boat in a storm, too busy staying afloat and dodging attacks to watch where it was going. Alastor’s influence was a hell of a river, and the eddies at its banks were dangerous. The middle was safer, all flowing water and smooth sailing, but the current there was fast.

Even through the adrenaline the cuts were sharper than muscle aches, but Clare’s trainers had said it before. No pain, no gain. Clare grimaced every time a new one was added, but the pain faded as his demonic healing kicked in, and years in the circus had done wonders for Clare’s tolerance. It was never long before the corners of his mouth curled back up to match Alastor's grin, and in the end he agreed to meet again, same time next week, before he knew what he was saying.

* * *

Clare was conscious of the eyes on him on his walk home, but none of them mattered. He was just another poor soul crawling his way home after an attack. No fun to mess with, and odds were anything he had on him had already been stolen. Nobody would bother him precisely because he was such an easy target. Clare kept a slow, relaxed pace, and by the time he reached his front door, the bleeding had already stopped. His shirt was a lost cause though, and he made a mental note to buy another when he had time.

What he didn’t expect was the din that greeted him when he walked in—running water, clanks of metal, and an irritated yell.

“Clare, you goddamned savage! I know she died, but didn’t your mom ever teach you to clean up after—woah!” The pot fell from Nick’s hands as he turned around. “You look like you went through a blender! What happened to you?” He shook his head before Clare could answer. “No, you know what? It’s fine. I’m gonna go get a towel.”

It took a minute for Nick to fetch one from the closet and spread it over the couch, long enough for Clare to pull off his shirt and toss it into his room. Blood was still matting his fur, but washing it out could wait until the water wouldn’t sting his cuts. Instead he leaned back on the couch with a long sigh and stared up at the empty ceiling.

“So,” Nick said, dropping down on the opposite end. “How was opening night?”

Huh. Clare looked down for a moment, then let his head fall back again, wondering why Nick was avoiding the obvious question. It didn’t matter. His show, his week, his injuries—they were all related in the end. “The Radio Demon showed up,” Clare said.

He didn’t expect Nick to let out a scoff. “Well. At least he didn’t kill the lot of you or I’d’ve heard about it. Everyone keeps going on about the guy. Radio Demon this, Radio Demon that, and when they find out I’m from his territory they act like I’m his damn secretary. At least it gets them to shut up and listen for five minutes. I mean it, the next time I hear the words Radio Demon I swear I’ll kill someone.”

Clare could feel the couch move as Nick gestured and took the chance for a long, slow stretch, working the aches out of his limbs. “Might want to have a chat with Jan then,” he mused. “She only ever calls him the Big Guy or His Lordship. Depends how sarcastic she’s feeling, I guess.”

Silence fell, and Clare looked down to see Nick staring at him incredulously, eyes wide and brows raised to his forehead plate.

“Oh,” Clare went on, the words falling from his mouth without a hint of forethought or filter. “In the theater some of us started calling him Our Good Patron and it stuck. And some of his contractees call him Bossman, or at least the ones at the station. But no one calls him Alastor, even though it’s his . . . it _is_ his real name, isn’t it? His human name. That’s what he said.”

Clare’s voice trailed off, and his eyes wandered back up to the ceiling. It wasn’t a question, but Nick answered anyway. “How the fuck should I know?”

“Maybe it’s _because_ it’s his real name? Nah, can’t be. I only found out today, and I still wouldn’t—”

A loud sigh, almost a groan, interrupted him. “Clare, I swear to Lucifer— Nobody uses the guy’s name because he’s not a person. He’s a living, walking kangaroo court, now if I hear another word about him I’m walking out that door, and I _swear_ I’ll—“

“Fine, fine!” Clare waved an arm to silence him, forcing himself to focus. “What about you? You’re back on time. Did your—” It only then occurred to Clare that he didn’t know where Nick had been. “Whatever you were doing. Did it go well?”

“’Whatever you were doing.’” Nick sounded appropriately unimpressed. “You wouldn’t be interested. It was a lot of walking around, a lot of meetings. But yeah, it went well. We scoped out a few territories, made connections. We’ve got the pieces, we just need to get them all in place before we pull the trigger on the strikes.”

“The strikes, huh.” Clare nodded along before he realized what he’d just said. “The strikes? How the hell do you expect a strike to work down here?”

“It’s not that different from above. The overlords don’t know hooey about mortal tech. All they’ve got is contracts. Cheap labor contracts mostly, and it’s easy enough to get them riled up. The real problem’s the scientists and engineers who actually know how the stuff works. Labor’s replaceable, but convince the brains behind it, one way or another, and that’ll cripple an industry on its own.”

“I know how a strike works,” Clare interrupted. “I’m asking how you expect a bunch of sinners to work together for more than five minutes.”

The incredulous silence was back until finally Nick breathed a reply. “Fuck, Clare. Did you think we were gonna gather in a circle and sing Kumbaya? Of course no one’s gonna cooperate! It’s Hell! You’d sooner strike gold than find a sinner with an altruistic bone in ‘em, but the one thing we’ve got plenty of is spite.”

“Spite?” Clare scoffed. “You’re going to start a revolution with spite?”

“What do you think a revolution is? Even up on the surface, for every saint who’s in it for the love of his fellow man or whatever, there’s a sinner who just wants to stick it to anyone better off than him. There’s not a revolution in the world that started with building people up. The first step’s always tearing down the ruling class, and that’s when people like me step in. We see the patterns, point the mob in the right direction, and pick up the pieces when it’s done. That’s why we need to strike now, while people are listening. Overlords aren’t invincible anymore, and the Radio Demon’s proof. Why else do you think everyone’s obsessed with him?”


	4. One More Week

Clare had never fallen asleep on a raft before, but he knew how it felt to doze off on the subway. It was waking up to the world being wrong—to unfamiliar scenery and station names and the sinking dread of being far from home. But a subway was simple to navigate, just check the map and take the next train home. It wasn’t so easy to paddle back upstream, but Clare knew he had no other choice.

He knew it the moment Arjun flinched from his attack on stage—an unprofessional, instinctive move even though Clare still insisted on the prop—and Clare felt his eyes follow the move, scanning for an opening. Two lessons. It only took two lessons, discounting the ones at the theater, and already the instincts had settled under his skin. Already he was this far gone.

Clare should have seen it coming. His new body had muscle memory like he’d only dreamed of in his old life. It helped him learn the trapeze in a matter of months, and now it was working against him. But that was just an excuse. The real problem was more subtle, and to solve it Clare slipped out of the theater minutes after his scene, never mind the final bow.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for, not on a Sunday night. Clare’s ears turned, picked up off-key singing from a block away, and followed it to a lively-looking bar. A few beers and a few losses at darts later, and his voice was joining the song. It was long past midnight when Clare stumbled his way home with a grin on his face and accomplishment buzzing through his veins

It didn’t matter that the apartment was empty if he was only conscious long enough to collapse on his bed.

It was the silence that was the true problem. At first it was unsettling coming back to an empty house, but within a week it was miserable. Background chatter from the radio couldn’t compare to a living, breathing person. It wasn’t real, wasn’t company. It couldn’t listen, couldn’t reply, and didn’t expect replies from him. It wasn’t someone to come home to, not like Clare had grown used to having. For years it had been Jule—Julia, his sister in the human world. Then it was his fellow performers, then Nick alone, and now even he was often gone for days at a time.

The silence was a hole Clare had never learned to fill. His voice rang hollow in it, echoing back like a confirmation no one was listening. But the Radio Demon could do it. Silence was anathema to the man, and Clare couldn’t stop looking at Tuesday circled in red on his calendar. At first Clare wasn’t sure why he’d done it. He was in absolutely no danger of forgetting the date, but he’d still stood up one quiet evening and grabbed a pen. By now he knew why. He was looking forward to it. It couldn’t go on.

He’d been proud last time of getting away with fewer scratches than the first. He’d thought maybe this time he might come out mostly unscathed, maybe even get his own scratch in return. He’d imagined the look on Alastor’s face—the mingled shock and excitement and promise of revenge—and he knew now he’d never see it. No, Clare knew what he had to do, and he knew it would be his death. He’d have to march in, cut the arrangement off, and refuse to fight no matter what the Radio Demon did. No matter what.

Clare had died in Hell just once before in a fall that went worse than intended and ended in a broken neck. Flashes of it still came up in his dreams. There was the sound of a crack, too loud and too close, and the distant dread of trying to talk but no sound coming out. “Something’s wrong. I can’t feel. . .” he tried to say, but he didn’t have the breath. Shadows ate at the edges of his vision until all he could see was a pinprick of light, and then nothing. An endless, timeless void that was deathly foreign and horrifyingly familiar and only broke when he woke up in bed and croaked for water.

He wouldn’t get off so easy this time. The Radio Demon would make him suffer, try to force him to fight back. He’d drag the fun out, and when it sank in that his new toy had stopped working, he’d get what entertainment he could out of breaking it.

Clare still forced himself to get up Tuesday morning. It was better than the alternative. The Radio Demon knew where Clare worked. Better to die in private than tempt him into a public service announcement on the courtesy of keeping appointments. Safer to rip off the bandage and get it over with.

But just as Clare was about to march out the door, a key turned in the lock. “You’re back,” he said as Nick wandered in and started looking around.

“Yeah, it took long enough. We finally finished up last night. Hey, would you mind. . .” He trailed off as his eyes finally settled on Clare. “You’re not looking great, pal. Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, I’m just. . .” Clare trailed off. ‘Off to commit suicide by Radio Demon?’. Nick still didn’t know about the lessons. It’d be too much to explain it all—too much to see Nick’s dumbfounded stare and be reminded again how idiotic he’d been. Better to end it all quietly. Get it over with and sweep the remains under the rug. “I’m just seeing a. . .a friend,” Clare finished.

“Do you owe him money?”

“What? No, I—” Clare sighed, forced out a chuckle, and put on a faint smile. He was an actor now, and he’d been practicing enough to tell a simple, well-intentioned lie. “I had too much to drink last night. I’ve had a headache all morning.”

Maybe Clare _had_ been looking sick, judging by how relieved Nick looked. Then Nick opened his mouth, and Clare reconsidered. “If you say so, but this is perfect timing! I was just about to ask if you wouldn’t mind stepping out for a few. I told a friend—real private sort of guy—that he could stop by. We _could_ go somewhere else if you need the place, and it’s probably fine if we stay in our rooms, but with your hearing and—”

Clare waved goodbye before Nick could waste any more breath excusing himself. “It’s fine. You live here too, sometimes. I’ll be back late. Maybe a few days late, depending. See you around.” With that, he closed the door behind him, and before he knew it he was back in the lobby of the radio station, staring down the same space-defying hallway. One more step and there’d be no going back, but just as he was about to take it a voice called out to him.

“Oh! You’re the Boss’s friend! You just missed him.”

“I just. . .” Clare trailed off, still processing what he’d just heard. The Radio Demon’s friend? No, no. That was a misunderstanding and a half, but more importantly, Alastor was gone? Now? Just as Clare had finally gathered his resolve? He could already feel it starting to slip like sand through his fingers.

“Yeah. Some upstart’s making trouble on the north end,” the receptionist went on. “Nothing serious, but you know how it is. Let one ant go, and you get a whole army. The show should be starting any—yep, there it is.”

With a crackle and a short cue for breaking news, the jazz filling the lobby cut off and was replaced by the voice of the Radio Demon. There was something about buying and selling, something about deals and boundaries. All of it went in one ear and out the other, and Clare wasn’t sure what to blame. Months of deliberately ignoring the Radio Demon’s broadcasts, weeks of having the radio on in the background and tuning it out, or simple shock. He stared at the receptionist as her five eyes blinked out of sync, then flinched as the first of screams came through the radio. Slowly she reached over to turn it off.

“So, not his friend then. Let me guess. Had a deal to meet him on Tuesdays, and you were dumb enough not to name a place? And now that he’s run off, you’re shit outta luck? Why don’t you, uh. . .” She looked around and into the trash can, then dumped a load of crumpled papers on the floor and flipped it upside down. “Why don’t you have a seat? You look like you could use a minute.”

Clare walked over numbly and sat. His tail swished across the floor as the woman spoke.

“It’s not as bad as you think, you know. Well, unless it is, but you seem like an okay guy, and the Boss likes you. Just see if you can swing a job here, and you’ll be set. It pays well, and no one’ll care that you’re contracted. Well. No one here anyway, since half of us did it by choice.”

It was only at the end that Clare started to make sense of her words. “Half of us did what by choice?”

“Made a deal. Signed a contract. Sold our souls for a job and a roof over our heads. However you want to put it, we’re all here for a reason. It’s not the worst place to be stuck. It’s still Hell, but the Bossman’s making it his and taking us along for the ride.”

“Wait, ‘us?’” Clare blinked and shook his head. “No, I—I didn’t make a deal.”

“Huh? Then why’re—” Her eyes unfocused, the top pair staying on his face while the bottom three flicked across his arms and chest. “Never mind. Like I said, we’re all here for a reason.”

Clearly she was remembering the weeks before and the sorry state Clare had left in. “I’m not. . .” Clare started but cut himself off. He wasn’t a masochist, but he was still here after all he’d told himself, feeling not relieved that he would live another week but adrift on an open sea. Still lost without his current, sitting around like a puppy waiting for Alastor to come home.

Maybe this was for the best. He had to cut it off, but he still didn’t want to. Not yet. One more week. He’d take one more week to gather his resolve and refine it to something that wouldn’t slip from his grasp. Not sand but a dagger, and Clare cursed and pulled himself to his feet. Not a dagger. No more daggers. Never again.

“I’ll see you next Tuesday!” the receptionist called as Clare stomped out the door.

* * *

It was at once easier and harder than Clare had expected to find a place to waste a few hours. He couldn’t go home, but he couldn’t see any of the usual shows. No drama, no violence. Today he needed something calm to clear his mind.

There were a surprising number of open doors for being only midafternoon, but that was a quirk of the neighborhood. When enough of the population worked evenings and nights, others changed their business hours to compensate. Most day clubs opened before the pentagram brightened as the night shift was getting off, then stayed open through the afternoon to catch the lunch rush and any pre-show parties.

The problem was finding one Clare wouldn’t mind killing time at. He wasn’t in the mood for strippers, burlesque, or stand up and had to pass the first half-dozen he saw. Eventually he caught the sound of trumpets and followed them to a club with a jazz band and vocalist. For an hour he sat in one of the booths, staring into his beer as it went flat.

Everyone wanted to be strong-willed. Everyone wanted to be in charge of their own destiny, but they’d all wound up in Hell anyway. Some were here willingly—the Radio Demon happily flaunted his insanity, and Nick would do whatever it took to serve his chosen cause—but most were like Clare. Too weak to bear the weight of their own sins, let alone fight the pull of another’s. Especially not when that other was the Radio Demon.

After all, the man had started as a sinner. He didn’t have the power inherent to a Hell-born demon. Everything he had, he’d won by falling far, far down into the darkest depths of dealmaking and dragging as many souls as he could in with him. And so quickly too. He was young, or at least he acted young, barely older than Clare. Barely arrived in Hell and already an overlord in all but title and ambition. If he’d been more willing to expand, more focused on power and territory than entertainment, then. . .

Then he really would be the hero Nick wanted. But he wasn’t. He was no hero; he was a star, brilliant from afar and quick to pull everyone into his orbit. Stay there and you could enjoy the show. Get too close and you would burn.

But that was Clare’s only hope now. To fall in like a comet, feel the pain his choice had brought him, then slingshot out and fly as far, far away as possible.

Like a comet. Clare pressed the image into his mind. Like a comet. He’d spend the next week bracing for his approach, getting ready for the pain and the loss of leaving. Clare pushed away his beer and rose to his feet, glaring at it as if it were a symbol of the Radio Demon himself, as if this was proof of his resolve. A moment later he looked around and let out a sigh, grateful that no one was watching. Clearly he’d found his calling in theater if he was going to be this overdramatic.

But that was the point. He had a job. His dream job, even if it was different than he’d expected, but what dream job wasn’t? He already had a path to follow—a path and not a current. He didn’t need Alastor, and obsessing over him wasn’t doing him any good. Clare grabbed his drink, tipped it back, and grimaced at the taste before walking out of the club with his head held high.

The Radio Demon’s broadcast had ended a while back, and the sound of talk shows and dance music streamed from storefront radios. Clare nodded along and swung his tail to the beat, wondering what he should do now. Leaving the club had been an impulsive move, and it was still too early to go home. Maybe he could find one of those stand up performers he’d passed by before.

“So, where to?”

“I—” Clare’s tail bristled and dropped at that familiar voice. No. Why now? Why him? He would have stopped dead in his tracks if the arm around his shoulder hadn’t kept him stumbling forward.

“No plans? Then it’s settled!” The Radio Demon quickened their pace toward the main street until Clare was almost jogging to keep up. He spoke on all the while, leaving Clare wondering how he had the breath for it. “My sincerest apologies for missing our meeting time, but it was a matter of urgent business. Absolutely unavoidable, but seeing as I’ve caught you just in time, I know exactly how to make it up to you.”

Clare turned to the right as they reached the main street, but the Radio Demon pulled him left instead, away from the radio station. Across the street and into traffic, and Clare’s legs locked as a car honked and swerved around them.

“It’s good to be eager, but I’m afraid that’ll have to wait ‘til next week!” the Radio Demon said, then grabbed Clare by the wrist instead. He walked on, and Clare was forced to stumble forward or else be dragged across the asphalt. “We don’t have time for distractions. The show starts in ten minutes!”

“The. . .the show?”

“Really, Clare, it’s at your own theater. The show! The Tempest! The real deal after a dame died a while back with the Bard’s works memorized down to the stage direction! And after that, the sequel.”

The two reached the other end of the street, and finally Clare felt like he could breathe again. “But The Tempest doesn’t have a sequel,” he said, as if that was the problem here. A show? They weren’t going to the radio station?

“Exactly!” Alastor finally turned to look back at Clare, grinning as widely as ever. “Aren’t you curious? I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I prefer to reserve judgment until I’ve seen it for myself. Brave of them to show theirs right after the original, and after pushing it to an afternoon showing to boot! Now, why don’t we see how much of that bravery is warranted?”

He went on, talking about actors and directors and names Clare vaguely recognized from his time in Hell and in the human world. It all passed him by as he exchanged bewildered stares with the man at the ticket window and was pulled off into a side hallway. Then the lights were dimming, the show was starting, and Clare could almost forget that he was watching it from the Radio Demon’s theater box. In any other circumstances, it might have been easy to forget. Alastor played the perfect audience. Clare could see him from the corner of his eye—legs crossed, hands resting on his knee, faint reflections of the spotlight glinting off his monocle. The very model of a cultured gentleman. He excused himself during the intermission to stretch his legs, and Clare spent the fifteen minutes with his head buried in his hands.

This was exactly what he didn’t need. The Radio Demon wasn’t his friend. He couldn’t be. He could drag Clare around all he liked, but that wouldn’t be friendship.

But it was still fun. The box had a great view of the stage, and it had been years since Clare had seen proper Shakespeare, not since he’d still been mortal. Alastor slipped in without a sound as the show resumed, and it was only as it ended that he finally spoke.

“Awful show,” he said with a grin, and Clare smiled back until the words caught up with him. “I forgot how much I hated that ending, and it’s even worse now. Everyone goes home happily ever after? How boring is that! And Prospero is horribly unrelatable.”

What? And Clare had thought Alastor would like Prospero. They were both schemers and mages, both proud of their wit and power, but the more Clare thought, the more it made sense. No wonder Alastor hated the ending.

“Of course he’s unrelatable. He forgave the people who wronged him and let go of revenge for his daughter’s sake. And _we’re_ in Hell.” There weren’t many here who could do the same, least of all Clare himself.

“No, not that!” Alastor chuckled. “He gave up his magic after devoting his life to it? Just because his daughter was all set? Just because his plan was over? That’s no way to live.” Alastor stood and leaned over the box’s railing. His arms gestured out, one toward the stage where Clare could faintly hear the drag of wood and cardboard as new sets were pulled into place. The other waved at the doors as some demons left and more came in to replace them for the next feature. Alastor spoke out over the audience, but Clare got the sense that he was talking more to himself than anyone else. “When one show ends, you prepare for the next until you die the way you lived. And then you go on just the same. Or maybe you disagree, _Caeden.”_

Alastor looked back over his shoulder, but Clare had been thinking about it lately—about names and pasts and futures—and this time he had a counter. “That’s what I’ve been doing. Going on. The name isn’t to get away from my old life. It’s to get away from old people.”

“Really now,” Alastor scoffed. “Running because you’re too afraid to break ties?”

No. Running because it was his only way to break ties with people who weren’t in Hell. Explaining would mean telling the Radio Demon about Jule though, and sinners didn’t talk about their pasts, not unless they were Alastor. “Why not?” Clare said instead. “We already look different. Take a new name, and no one will find you.”

Alastor’s grin only widened, and that was never a good sign. He turned around and leaned back against the railing, and Clare regretted not standing up as the show ended. He couldn’t do it now, not with Alastor looking down like he had him cornered. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he said with a tip of his head. “But Hell’s not so forgiving. Turns out no matter how warped they end up, we all recognize the people we knew well from the moment we see them. Maybe it’s another punishment.” For a moment Alastor looked away, up to the ceiling, and Clare let out a breath. “There’s no getting away from the people you most hate, and there’s no deluding yourself into thinking the ones you most want to see might be near you all along, just strangers in a crowd.” Then he looked back down, and his eyes were sharp, glowing in the half-darkness of the theater. “But you’d know that already if you had someone down here you were running from. So what is it, Caeden? What is it you’re so desperate to avoid?”

Alastor didn’t seem surprised when Clare fell silent, and after a few seconds, he dropped back into his seat and engrossed himself in the playbill. A minute later Clare excused himself to take a walk down the hall.

The worst part was that Alastor was right. It was on a technicality, but dealmakers specialized in turning those to their advantage. It wasn’t his past Clare wanted to distance himself from, it was his past _self_ —the person his mother had raised and the one who’d tried to take care of Jule. That man hadn’t been perfect. He’d pickpocketed and stolen, but only so Jule could live a good life, and he’d always felt vaguely remorseful later. That was the person they deserved to keep in their memories. They deserved better than someone tarred with the same brush as Clare, someone who could kill a man and only regret the consequences, never the act.

Someone who could reach the end of the hall, turn back, sit down beside the Radio Demon, and enjoy the bloodbath that was The Tempest: A Witch’s Web. And he did enjoy it, despite himself.

The play started on Prospero’s death—a fact that had Alastor chuckling under his breath—and from there the script was rather tightly written. Miranda learned of the betrayal against her father and about his magic, and from there she took revenge into her own hands. It featured all the elaborate plotting and conspiracy of the original, but every plot led to death and not forgiveness. It ended as a proper tragedy with Miranda sitting on the throne as queen, driven insane by the spirits of those she’d had killed and those caught in the crossfire.

But for how careful the writing was, the direction was undeniably tasteless. By the time the first act was done, even Alastor was leaning in close to complain that all these people stabbing each other were just distracting from the plot. That Miranda wailing as she smeared herself in her enemies’ blood was too over the top. That the battle scene that dragged on for ten minutes before the intermission was pointless, just a mess of extras overacting to try and stand out even though none of them could swing a sword to save their lives.

“You’re much better than that, Caeden,” he said during the break. “It’s all about putting on the best show you can. Passion without melodrama. Your show always struck a balance, but this?” He wrapped an arm around Clare’s shoulders and pulled him closer as the curtains raised on an oversized meat grinder. “This does have its own charm.”

Sure enough, the scene ended with an actor screaming while a pile of meat oozed out of the grinder. It was well performed. Clare only recognized the trick because it was his stage, and he knew where the trapdoors were. Judging by the gasps from the audience, not all of them realized it was an act. It was realistic enough that Clare could feel his stomach turn, but Alastor was snickering into his ear, and Clare couldn’t help but chuckle along.

Alastor wasn’t his friend, but Clare could get used to these trips to the theater. It was fine that he hadn’t managed to break off their arrangement. If every Tuesday could go this way, he wouldn’t have to, but of course, that was impossible. He’d just have to do it next time, exactly as he’d planned. He’d just have to wait one more week.

* * *

One more week. One more week. The words ran through Clare’s head as he made his way back to his apartment. The pentagram was dark in the sky, but it wasn’t late, not as late as it would’ve been if he’d gone out drinking. Clare paused outside his door, listened for voices, and knocked when he didn’t hear any.

“If that’s you, Clare, the door’s unlocked,” shouted Nick. “Anyone else can fuck right off.” Clare pushed the door open and was greeted with the sight of Nick lounging on the couch with a beer and a newspaper. “I thought you said you’d be back late. Change of plans?”

It was an understatement and a half, but technically true. “Yeah,” Clare said. “My friend got held up by something. He caught up with me after a while, but it was too late for the usual. We saw a show instead.”

“Of course he did," Nick muttered, and Clare gave him a questioning look. “My friend got held up too. Half the damn territory did. Some nitwit was shooting shit up on the main road, so our old pal and patron went and put on a show of his own. I'm surprised he didn't tell you _all_ about it.”

“He didn’t. . .”

Clare trailed off as he froze halfway to his room. 'I'm surprised he didn't tell you.' There was an edge to the words, no matter how Nick had tried to keep them casual. But Nick couldn’t know. Surely not. Clare had been careful to keep his Tuesday appointments a secret, but he _had_ marked his calendar. He’d never mentioned Alastor by name, not except the first time when he’d rambled on about it. Clare had been as vague as he could about his “friend,” but maybe he’d still left enough dots for Nick to connect.

It called for a test. “Well, our pal did broadcast the whole thing,” Clare said. “He didn’t have to tell me.”

Nick’s mouth curled like he’d tasted something rancid. “Eugh. It sounds wrong when you say it. Not ironic enough. He’s not _‘our_ pal.’ You might be theater buddies or whatever, but count me out. And anyway, didn’t I tell you he’d keep a radius?”

“Yeah, a while back, I think.” Clare heard himself answer and noted with a hint of pride that his voice wasn’t nearly as faint as he felt. So Nick did know, but all things considered, he was taking it incredibly well. Maybe it wasn’t the circled calendar that had clued him in. Maybe he’d known all along, from the first time Clare came home cut half to ribbons. After all, Nick had never asked how it happened, not even then. “How long did you know?”

“From the start!” Nick leaned back and smirked. “I was keeping tabs on the guy since his first broadcasts, and I’ve kept even more since we moved here.” He paused and let out a sigh, then raised a brow when Clare did too. “Anyway, I’ll be dropping most of them soon.”

“What? Why?” Did he think Clare would be his informant?

But Nick just waved his newspaper. “Haven’t you noticed? He hasn’t done a thing since he killed what’s-his-name. Hasn’t picked fights with any more overlords, hasn’t expanded, hasn’t even tried to make his claim official. All he’s done in prance around his private Broadway.” A slam echoed through the room as Nick threw his paper to the ground and sprang to his feet, but when he turned to Clare, he was grinning. “But you know what? That’s just fine! I should’ve figured it wouldn’t be so easy! The guy might be useless, but his name still gets people listening. The plan hasn’t changed. We prep until the Cleanse, then right after, when Hell’s at its shakiest, we start dropping dominoes.”

The Cleanse, huh. It was coming up in just under a month. Clare did the mental math—not on a Tuesday—then mentally kicked himself. He’d already said it. One more week.

* * *

Just one more week. The mantra spun through Clare’s thoughts until he was once again standing at the station, staring down that impossible hallway. He took a deep breath, raised his foot over the threshold, and nearly fell flat on his face. He’d never expected Alastor to walk up behind him, grab him by the hand, and pull him inside without ever breaking stride.

“A good afternoon to you Caeden! Glad you could make it!” he said, and only left room for a “Good after—” from Clare before he was off again. “How unfortunate that people keep calling me away right on Tuesday afternoons. Today’s perpetrator won’t be trying it again, believe you me, but how will the others learn their lesson if I don’t have time to show everyone the consequences, hm? At this rate, I’ll be late again next week, but I simply couldn’t let it happen two weeks in a row. You might start to question my commitment, and we simply can’t have that!”

Alastor pushed open a door that led to a wide ballroom, and before Clare could protest—not that he could even find the words after that speech—a dagger had been conjured in his hand. Instinct had Clare raising it to block Alastor’s strike, and surely it’d be fine to wait a while before Clare said he was through. Wait until the end, maybe, when Alastor would be in a better mood. Until he wasn’t tense and unsatisfied from a torture cut short. And since when had Clare been able to read his moods?

It wasn’t from his smile. That was as enigmatically cheerful as ever. It was from his movements—from half-steps forward and hasty attacks where he might once have baited Clare into a counter. It wasn’t clumsy. Clare didn’t know if Alastor could be clumsy without playing it off as completely intentional, but it _was_ careless. It left openings even Clare could see, and as he stepped to the side, he raised his dagger to the inside of Alastor’s wrist.

And there it froze. Clare didn’t move, and for a moment neither did Alastor. Their eyes met, and Clare expected surprise or anger or maybe a hint of pride if he wanted to be generous. He didn’t expect that wide-eyed, hungry anticipation.

“Well? What are you waiting for? _Permission?”_

Alastor’s voice was as smooth as ever, and that more than anything had Clare’s hair standing on end. It had to be showing, he knew, but it didn’t matter. Alastor could already see that he was frozen in place, dagger tip shaking from the vise grip he held it in, mouth open but no words coming out.

“You’re not my contractee, Caeden. You don’t have to ask.” The knife fell from Alastor’s hand, and Clare couldn’t hear if it clattered to the ground or vanished on the way. Any sound was drowned out by his racing heartbeat and Alastor’s words. “I’m not here to teach you to _almost_ kill a demon.” His hand alighted, palm first, on the tip of Clare’s dagger. “I’m here to show you how, and it starts with not holding back.”

His hand pressed down, and Clare knew better than to pull away. Blood trickled down the blade and dripped from a quillon, but a different red caught Clare’s eye. The corners of Alastor’s eyes were pinched from pain and the anticipation of more, but his gaze was sharper than ever and all the more hypnotic for it.

He still bled. He still felt pain. He was still the Radio Demon, but somewhere in there was a man who had once been human. Maybe he was still there, buried too deep behind magic and stage makeup to ever dig out again. Maybe he’d long since become just another mask, long before Alastor had even died. Whichever it was, that very otherness made him impossible to look away from.

Alastor’s fingers wrapped around the guard, and with a jerk, he pulled the dagger from Clare’s grip. There was blood on Clare’s hand, and for once it wasn’t his. For a moment the impulse crossed Clare’s mind to copy Alastor and raise it to his mouth, but that was insane, and his hand didn’t so much as twitch.

Instead he watched as Alastor raised his hand to the chandeliers and let the dagger vanish into nothing. The wound remained, and a fresh trickle of blood flowed across his wrist and down his sleeve. After a while, Alastor finally spoke.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? They say Hell’s meant for consequences, but look at that! Already healed! Well, more or less.” Alastor flexed his hand, gave an exaggerated wince, and looked back at Clare. “But maybe that’s the nature of our new home. Everyone’s stuck in the same old loops because no matter what, we’ll always go back to who we are. The only way to change is for someone to touch your soul, and ha! What sane demon would ever allow that?”

Alastor’s voice was as cheery as ever, and he looked back at his hand as he clenched and unclenched his fist. It was almost enough for Clare to overlook his words, but he couldn’t forget what he’d heard. Was that. . . ? Was that regret? From the Radio Demon? Or if not regret exactly then at least an understanding that he was being punished? An admission that, contrary to all appearances, he hadn’t found his personal heaven here in Hell?

Clare didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t know what Alastor wanted him to make of it. Trying to console him was unthinkable. He’d probably kill Clare for daring to pity him, and there was no denying that Alastor deserved every drop of punishment coming his way.

But before Clare could think of anything else to say, Alastor was wiping his hand on his coat and laughing. “Oh, don’t you worry about me. My loop is a wide one and entertaining enough that it’ll be centuries before I have to think about it. What’s more interesting, Caeden, is where your loop will take you.”

Alastor held out his hand, still streaked with blood, and Clare halfway raised his own to take it before he stopped. It was said that a true dealmaker could seal any bargain with a handshake, and any bargain could cost a man his soul if he wasn’t careful. Clare hadn’t heard any terms, but he hesitated anyway, and Alastor grabbed his wrist instead.

“Now then, I’m afraid that’s all for today! I have places to be, and you have a lesson to take in. I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

Before Clare could say a word, his shadow was swirling around him, blocking out sight and sound until it vanished and left him in the lobby. The receptionist gave him a wave and a smile, and for a while, Clare just stared down the hallway. It wouldn’t take him to Alastor anymore, he knew. It wouldn’t even take him to the ballroom, a room that couldn’t possibly exist inside this building anyway. It’d probably just loop around and spit him back into the lobby, at least until next Tuesday.

One more week, the mantra went on. One more week as Clare looked down at his hand, still stained with Alastor’s blood. Slowly, experimentally, he raised it to his mouth, and with that, he knew he was fine. It tasted like copper. Not disgusting but nothing good either. No pleasure at the taste or sadistic glee in knowing it was Alastor’s. He’d stayed for one more day and come out no worse than before. He was learning what Alastor taught, not taking after him. There was no harm in knowing how to defend himself, especially not here. There was no harm in one more week.

And if Alastor did come late, Clare could simply wander home and let that be his excuse. He could pretend he was the one who cared about punctuality and cut off their arrangement without losing his life in the process. The thought of it echoed through his apartment all week as Clare narrated to himself, hoping it might help compensate for Nick’s absence. By the time Tuesday came around, Clare was almost expecting to walk in a straight line through the radio station’s lobby, into the hallway, across the lobby again, and back through the front door. No turns, just the station itself escorting him out while its master was away.

It really shouldn’t have been a surprise when it led him to an ornate set of double doors instead, but by then there was no turning back. He wasn’t ready. He’d spent the week too busy fantasizing to prepare himself, but that was fine. He’d remember next time. It’d only be one more week.


	5. The Goose and Hatchet

No matter how many times he caught it, Clare couldn’t seem to stop his hand from wandering to his hip as he walked home. His fingers brushed absently against the unfamiliar weight hanging from his belt, toying with the thought of curling around the hilt. He’d grown familiar with having a dagger in hand, but Alastor’s illusions lasted only as long as he wanted them to. Those daggers didn’t need to be sheathed, but this one was real. Sharp steel, straight from the smithy.

But even if Alastor’s illusions didn’t linger, his words did. Loops, loops, loops. The idea had echoed in the back of Clare’s mind for weeks. It jumped to the forefront with every bar, casino, and street brawl he passed. Every vending machine full of drugs, every passed-out junkie, and every stroll down the main street of Alastor’s turf. Marquees and neon signs fought each other for attention, and all of it was the same. Sinners living as they’d died and dying again as they’d lived. Clare had watched it from his window. The Cleanse had come and gone three days ago as Clare savored the feeling of having a sturdier hidey-hole than his old circus trailer. He’d pulled his curtains shut and peered through the gaps as demons crept or sprinted through the streets—whichever they thought would keep them safer as they ran toward their vices even on the most dangerous day of the year.

It brought to mind a saying Clare had heard while he’d still been alive. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Nothing screamed ‘condemned’ like reenacting all their sins in Hell, but Alastor seemed happy enough. Overjoyed, even. What was his loop? A daily one of carnage and entertainment? That was the easy answer, the obvious one, but Alastor had said his loop was wide.

There was no point in speculating, not without knowing more about Alastor’s old life. There was no point assuming he was right in the first place. Since when was Alastor a scholar of philosophy? He spoke so confidently, on-air and off, that it was easy to assume his words had weight—that they were more than the empty bluster and idle musing of someone barely older than Clare himself.

The quote was different. Clare didn’t know where it came from, but it had the authority of popularity and repetition. The quote was reassuring. Even here—even in Hell—people who learned from their pasts could change. It took wisdom and willpower, but it could be done, and the first step was always deciding how. There were infinite ways to break any loop, and it was only with Alastor’s help that Clare had found his.

In Hell, everything always came back to sins and regrets. Alastor certainly didn’t regret any of his crimes, and in retrospect neither did Clare. Not even the chiefest of them all. The more he thought back to the moment, the more he realized it wasn’t killing the man that he’d hated but the barbarity of it—the horror in Jule’s eyes and the eyes of the jury when they learned he’d not only murdered a man but brutalized him. Clare could do better now. He could end it all in one clean cut and walk away knowing he’d done the right thing.

It was the difference between the circus and theater, between Clare’s sins and Alastor’s, between regret and fulfillment. It was the difference of awe and respect, albeit a respect born of fear. Alastor carried with him an air of class and dignity that no one could deny. Nobody laughed at his broadcasts, not when it wasn’t intended. Nobody heard him punishing sinners for breaking one of his arbitrary rules and looked down on him for losing his temper, not as they’d done to Clare. It wasn’t the mindless, meaningless violence of the circus. It was a performance—deliberate, purposeful, and well-executed.

Clare had intended the dagger for self-defense, but his hand wandered all too readily down to his belt. Maybe it wasn’t wrong that the motion came easy. Maybe the next time someone deserved to die, Clare’s first instinct would be to stab them and be done with it. He wouldn’t be a beast flying off the handle but something closer to Alastor. Someone who knew what he could and would not permit and was willing to act on it. The difference had always been in the execution.

If that was Clare’s old loop—having to hold back his emotions because he wasn’t competent enough to act on them—then maybe that was the past he had to learn from. And if Alastor was right—if touching someone’s soul was what it took to change them—then didn’t that mean he’d already done it? He’d managed to reach Clare’s without even shaking his hand.

Maybe that was the true power of a dealmaker.

“And where are you off to?”

The shout came from across the street and snapped Clare out of his reverie like the crack of thin ice. This was no time to be getting distracted.

“Home,” he said and halfway unsheathed the dagger. “After picking this up from the Goose and Hatchet. The streets aren’t safe these days.”

Maybe it was the flash of steel, maybe the way Clare had answered—quick, straightforward, and cheery, picked up straight from Alastor himself—or maybe that he hadn’t stopped walking as he spoke, and they would’ve had to chase him down. Whatever the reason, the thugs hefted their bats and crowbars, and the one who’d shouted tipped his head and waved for the group to head the opposite way. Clare nodded back, sheathed his dagger, and kept his wits about him for the rest of the trip. The riots may not have reached Alastor’s turf, but that didn’t make it any safer.

Nick should’ve known better. It hadn’t taken a day for his strikes to descend into chaos. Sunday was the Cleanse, Monday morning was picketing, and by evening Hell was ablaze with looting and riots anywhere demons thought they could get away with it. Anywhere the local overlords were still missing after the Cleanse, mostly. It should’ve made Alastor’s turf a prime target. He’d been away since the carnage started, touring between hotspots and broadcasting the whole time, all except a couple of hours yesterday to keep his weekly meeting with Clare. It was almost an honor.

Yet despite his absence, there weren’t any broken windows or boarded-up storefronts—no more than usual anyway. Crowds of armed demons prowled the streets, but they were looking for living targets, not loot, and especially for anyone who so much as looked dissatisfied enough to hold up a picket sign.

Ironically Alastor’s domain was in many ways ground zero for anti-communist sentiment. It was well-off enough not to foster unrest, violent enough that sticking your neck out the wrong way would certainly get you killed, and attractive to people like Clare. People who’d lived through the Great War and the Roaring Twenties, grown up on patriotic propaganda, and hadn’t seen the depression for the systemic collapse it was—or so Nick said. They were the people who’d taken Alastor’s recent broadcasts as a warning and an excuse. ‘Don’t let the same happen in your backyard,' all with an unsubtle wink.

Never mind that Alastor’s arrival was the spark that ignited the fuse in the first place. Never mind that half the communists’ leadership had met in his territory and a few still lived there, however nominally.

That was another reason to stay alert. Clare hadn’t seen the other leaders except in the earliest days when they’d been soapboxing with Nick, but Nick had said he'd be back after the Cleanse. He wasn’t though, and on a hunch, Clare peered from the corner of his eye at the next curbside beating he passed. There was a flash of purple feathers and a squawk that certainly didn’t belong to Nick, and Clare jogged past before anyone could accuse him of being too curious.

It figured that just as Clare was starting to worry, Nick would be there to greet him at the door.

“Oh, for the love of—! Where  _ were  _ you, Clare? Next time leave a note or something! I thought you’d died!”

Clare ducked under Nick’s arm blocking the doorway and dropped on the couch with a sigh. It was a relief to be home and even more of one to know Nick was safe. He was the last of them, everyone Clare knew well enough to care, all present and accounted for in the new year.

“You know I’m not dumb enough to go out during a Cleanse,” Clare said. “If I died, this place would be a wreck. You’d know.”

Nick frowned and pointed toward the radio, currently off. “I’m not talking about the Cleanse. It’s a mess out there, and some of them found executioners' spears.”

Clare’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t seen anyone armed with celestial steel, not today or yesterday, but it made sense. The gangs here were looking to maul people, not erase them. Elsewhere, though. . . “Is that why you were late? Be careful out there, Nick.”

But Nick just scoffed. “Nah, I was late because the road from Pandemonium was one extended car crash. I know how to get around, but you should stay inside before—”

“I can take care of myself.”

If Nick had been drinking, he might have choked from how hard and suddenly he laughed. “What, with that toy on your hip? Clare, these are guys who got sent to Hell for killing. You’re not—”

“So did I.”

The silence stretched long and deep as Nick let that sink in. “Seriously?”

Clare drew the dagger, flipped it through the air, caught the tip between thumb and forefinger, and held it out. “Try me.”

Nick waved his hand, denying. “Pass. I’m not going to fight you Clare, but damn. Here I had you pegged as a burglar. Quiet, light on your feet, and you spent half your time running on rooftops after we moved.” He sighed and dropped down on the couch next to Clare. “Mine was grifting.”

“Huh?”

Nick rolled his eyes in that way that meant Clare was being particularly dense. “If you’re going to dump your sins on my lap, then you get to have mine too. I ran telephone scams. If you ask me, it was an idiot tax for anyone too stupid to deserve what they had, but God loves his idiots. Anyway, what’s for dinner? You stocked up like I said, right? The supply lines are even more wrecked than usual this year.”

Clare nodded, but he hadn’t been the only one who remembered to prep for the Cleanse. The pickings had been slim, and the two shared a dinner of rice, canned beans, and mystery meat while Alastor’s voice narrated the descent of Hell into chaos. It was fascinating, Clare thought, the way Alastor came through just as clearly as ever, no matter what was happening in the background. It wasn’t just his voice either. The clap of his hands, snap of his fingers, and even the crunch of his footsteps on rubble weren’t drowned out at all by the screams and explosions. If Clare didn’t know better, he might have thought Alastor was in the room with them. The distortion around him was exactly the same over the radio as in person.

“Say," Nick said eventually. "You weren't an assassin by any chance, were you?”

Clare wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not, so he went with a middle ground, an obviously forced chuckle. "Of course not.”

Nick let out a huff. “Shame. We could use a good assassin.”

There was no responding to that, so Clare got up to collect their plates, rinse them off, and open a can of tinned peaches for dessert. The broadcast went on as Alastor pulled another demon into an interview.

_ A fine day for wanton destruction, don’t you think, sir? _

_ “You’re—! Yeah! Yeah, fine! A fine day!” _ The broadcast went quiet, and Clare could all but see Alastor holding his microphone out at some terrified demon, his grin as sinister as ever and growing wider for every second of silence. It only took three for the tension to grow unbearable.  _ “Um. . .are you. . .aren’t you going to do something. . .sir?” _

_ Such as? _

_ “Well, um. . .blow something up? Fight someone?” _

_ Is that an offer? _

_ “What? No, I—!” _

_ Just as well! I’d have to decline anyway. You see, today I’m wearing my live-reporter hat! I found it on the way here. Shame what happened to its last owner, but journalism can be quite the dangerous field, even when you’re trying to stay impartial. _

_ “But you’re—” _

_ Just here for the show and a few questions, if you please. This is  _ your  _ day, and your audience is just dying to know: what  _ are  _ you trying to accomplish here? _

The background noise of the broadcast rose in volume. Cheers rose over the sound of smashing glass, splintering wood, and the crackling roar of fire.  _ “Well, sir, Frankie said to smash this whole block and take anything we wanted, so. . .that’s what I’m doing.” _

_ Yes, clearly, but to what end? _

_ “I’m not. . . . You’d have to ask Frankie for that, sir. Something about a loophole in the protection contracts, I think?” _

_ Oh, really? I may just follow up on that, but I’m not talking to Frankie, am I? You’re the one with the ears of thousands of demons throughout Hell, and they all want to know, why are you, personally, here? _

_ “Well that’s easy. It beats a nine to five, don’t it? Can’t afford half this stuff on a shi— uh, garbage wage in the first place. Oh, uh, sir.” _

“‘Sir, sir, sir,’” Nick muttered under his breath. “Why does he get all the respect?”

Clare wasn’t sure if he’d been meant to hear that. He glanced over to where Nick was sprawled on the couch, decked out in sweatpants and a stained tank top. “He wears a suit, for one.”

“So do I! You think I go on the podium dressed like this? So what’s the difference, huh? Gold cufflinks? Silk cravat? Fucking epaulettes?”

“He does have a monocle.”

“A. . . . You’re kidding.”

It was getting easier to talk to Nick lately, and Clare finally had a sense of why. Nick wasn’t the only one in the know anymore. He'd been spending enough time away that he wasn’t the only one with answers, and talking to him had stopped feeling like getting talked down to. “Nope, no joke! If you ask me, it really pulls the look together.” Clare paused as a realization sank in. "You've never seen him?"

“I don’t spend my evenings frolicking down Broadway, and you know he doesn’t photograph. Nah, I count myself lucky that I haven’t met him out and about. It'd probably get me dead or roped into some bullshit interview. And speaking of interviews, is that what you went out for? There’s plenty of positions opening up right about now.”

After almost three months of running, Clare’s musical was down to two showings a week, assuming none of the leads had died in the Cleanse. None of Clare’s other auditions had borne fruit, but it was no surprise. He was a dancer first and an actor by fluke, and three months weren’t enough to change that. He’d made no secret of looking for work elsewhere, and today he’d finally found a lead.

“Not exactly. But I have one tomorrow. Wish me luck.”

* * *

The Goose and Hatchet was half a mile outside Alastor’s territory, and it was an oddity—half smithy, half alehouse. It was two stores in two buildings, but they shared between them a wall and an old, weatherbeaten sign. The painted wood hung out over the street, emblazoned with a dancing bird holding a flagon and wearing a top hat. Along the base was written ‘The Goose and Hat.’ A small plank had been nailed to the end with the letters ‘chet’ burned in.

The buildings themselves were solid stone brick, built in a medieval style that had withstood the tests of time and conflict. Centuries had passed, and still the Goose and Hatchet stood as proud and anachronistic as its owner. When he spoke it wasn’t with the ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s that Clare had half-expected, but with an odd cadence and an accent that wasn’t quite French.

“Hand that here.” The man said and reached out his hand. Clare unsheathed his dagger and held it out by the blade, and the owner turned it back and forth. “Hm. Keen edge. Fine metalwork. This is one of our pieces, is it not?”

“Yes, sir,” Clare answered, and the man smiled. So it  _ was _ good advice. The smith who’d been here yesterday—the one who’d helped Clare pick out his dagger and put in a good word for him—had added in a few tips on how to talk around Sir Edric, the Goose and Hatchet's owner and manager. The man was a knight, a real one from back when it was more than a title, and he’d kept this place standing for centuries while the city collapsed and rebuilt around it. He liked to be called Sir.

“Have you ever held a sword?” he asked.

“Yes,” Clare answered. It was technically true. He’d handled swords when the production switched out their props, but he’d never swung one at a person. “But I’ve never used it. Sir.”

“Then why seek employment here? You know what will be asked of you, do you not?”

Here it was. The question Clare knew all along he’d have to answer. The one he’d been preparing all night for. “Because you won’t get many sinners nowadays who can sword fight, sir. No matter who you find, they’ll need training, and I’m a fast learner. Fast in general.” He gestured at his dagger and took a deep breath. “I was a dancer when I was alive, and from what I’ve seen, fighting’s the same. You start with fundamental forms and moves, and the real art is how you string them together.”

Edric gave Clare a considering look, then turned and waved his hand for Clare to follow. “Come. We shall see if you’re as fast as you claim.”

The inside of the Goose and Hatchet was no different from any other bar one might expect to find in Hell, with one exception. Where most had a raised stage for performances, this one had a sunken pit lined with packed earth and a layer of sand. Next to it stood a rack of swords, and the knight gestured for Clare to take one. Clare took his time choosing, unsure if this was another part of the test. Most of the swords were normal enough, but a few were wickedly jagged, bizarrely shaped, or impossible to hold. In the end, Clare settled on as simple a straight sword as he could find with a hilt suited to a human hand.

He hopped down into the pit and was on guard the moment his feet hit the ground, a lesson well learned from Alastor’s unpredictability. It earned him an approving glance from Edric, but the knight still held his stance for a few seconds before striking. The sword flew at Clare’s left, but his own was there to stop it, barely in time. He saw the arc as the knight’s sword moved blindingly fast, arcing up and around to his right, but his arms couldn’t follow. By the time his guard was in place, the flat of the sword was already pressed against his ribs.

“Is that it?” Edric said, but Clare shook his head and pushed the blade away.

“It’s heavier than I’m used to, sir. And slower. I’ll need time to adjust.”

The knight harrumphed, but he didn’t seem dissatisfied by the response. His face was calm as he took his stance, and after a moment he stepped forward and repeated the same attack. This time Clare was in place to block the second strike, only for the sword to angle down and press against his thigh, still without drawing blood. Clare didn’t say a word, only stepped back and adjusted his guard as they went through the motions again.

“As it seems you already know,” Edric said without missing a beat, “the Goose and Hatchet hires no entertainers. Instead we have our right of challenge. As an employee, you shall be expected to preserve the honor of our staff and be at least halfway competent in the art of the sword.”

The last word was matched with a downswing, but Clare was ready to block it. The knight punctuated his words with heavy attacks, just like Alastor did, but he didn’t stop after Clare blocked it. Instead he pivoted, twisted the sword around Clare’s guard, and scored a shallow cut along Clare’s shoulder.

The pain was almost an afterthought by now, almost more expected than the pulled blows that had come before, and Clare barely winced before stepping forward with his own slash. It was the same set of attacks as the first the knight had shown him, and Edric’s approving look only grew as he blocked and Clare transitioned smoothly into the follow-up. It was futile, of course. Edric knew the moves far better than Clare did. He knew exactly how to block them, leave Clare off balance, and force him back on defense.

“We shan't expect you to best every challenger,” Edric said. “What we save on entertainment, we pay for in prizes of free ale, but lose too often and it  _ will _ come out of your pay.”

He kept the rally going for a few more attacks before weaving his sword around Clare’s guard and pressing the point to his gut. Automatically Clare braced himself for the pain without flinching away, but it didn’t so much as tear his shirt before pulling away. The reaction earned him a curious stare, but it wasn’t long before Edric was back on the offensive, setting an easy pace that gave Clare just enough room to read his moves and block.

“The rules for any duel are agreed upon by challenger and defender, but the standard is first to three touches. Challengers and defenders alike may draw blood, but only if the wounds are shallow. You won’t be the first I’ve let go for driving away customers.” The last word was paired with a heavier blow to drive the point home. “Likewise, if a challenger wounds a bartender to the point where they can no longer pour drinks, they forfeit their winnings. We reward skill here, not butchery.”

As he said it, he parried Clare’s counterattack and tapped the edge of his sword to Clare’s neck just softly enough to avoid breaking skin. As it did, Clare could feel his eyes going wide as his grin spread across his face.

This was it. He knew he’d come to the right place. He’d known it all along, from the moment he walked through the door of the smithy. Clare hadn’t so much as looked around before he one of the workers was guiding him around, making small talk, and helping Clare choose the right dagger to suit his form and tastes. In the Goose and Hatchet, violence was a business and an art form, and Clare should have realized long ago that this was what he’d needed. His meetings with Alastor were a start—a running start, really—but it’d take more than that to turn his life around. Here was a place where Clare could truly solidify his new loop. He’d never have found it in the human world. Everyone was mortal there, and violence always carried with it a shroud of fear. Up above, violence was an evil to be shunned and avoided. Here, it was a fact of life. No one cared  _ if _ someone got hurt. All that mattered was  _ how. _

And as for that ‘how,’ Clare was starting to see the patterns. There were two of them, interwoven but distinct. It may have been coincidence, but the knight fought like Alastor. At times he’d start a rally, casually exchanging attacks, blocks, and parries more to savor the clash of blades than to score a hit. Other times he didn’t just passively look for openings but created them with precise counters that pushed Clare’s sword off-center.

The difference was wider when Alastor did it. Knives were meant for quick stabs, not rallies or drawn-out exchanges, even if their demonic reflexes made it possible. It was more obvious when Alastor was playing around or going for the kill, but it showed in Edric’s movements precisely because they were so practiced. There were times when his choreography was meant for a stage—for a long, dramatic duel between mortal enemies—and times when it was meant to efficiently dispatch a foe on the battlefield.

“And what kind of skill do you reward more, sir?” Clare asked between dodges. “Combat or showmanship?” It had to be both if challenges were meant to take the place of entertainment, but where was the balance struck?

For a moment Edric paused as he barked out a laugh, but he still managed to block Clare’s slash. “Not only fast, but sharp too!” he said, still chuckling.

“I—” Clare started before cutting himself off. If this was an interview, it’d do him no good to admit he wasn’t that observant—that he’d picked up the difference after hours of watching Alastor, not minutes of watching Edric. Clare still faltered enough that for a moment his grip weakened. With a twist of his blade, Edric wrenched Clare’s sword from his grasp. Clare’s eyes traced the arc as it spun off and slid under a nearby table, but his hands were already moving.

In a flash, Clare reached down to his belt, and before he knew what he’d done, he’d stepped back, drawn the dagger, and blocked the next attack. Edric smiled as he bore down, pressing the full weight of his sword against Clare’s guard.

“No need for modesty here! It takes daring to face down one’s foes!” Edric said, then stepped back. “As for your question, the answer lies in the day’s patrons. Our regulars have always applauded displays of skill, but lately, we’ve found ourselves drawing a new crowd. Those ones do so love their flashing steel and sprays of blood.”

Clare nodded in understanding. There were benefits to being near Alastor’s domain. He might’ve tried to say more, but Edric raised his sword and stabbed forward, and Clare could barely blink. Every ounce of attention was trained on Edric and his blade, on defending without giving round and scanning for opportunities. By losing his sword, Clare had lost the benefit of range. His dagger was lighter, faster, and more familiar, but it didn’t have the leverage to stop Edric’s blade as easily. Clare’s arm was growing tired from blocking, and he didn’t have the reach to counterattack, but in a split-second, he saw it. A gap in Edric’s defenses. Clare darted in, only to realize his mistake. It wasn’t an opening but a bait. The gap closed, Clare’s dagger caught against Edric’s quillon and bounced off harmlessly, and the edge of Edric’s blade brushed against Clare’s shoulder.

With that, Edric stepped back and lowered his sword, letting Clare close his eyes and catch his breath. “You’re no match for the regulars yet,” he said, “but with practice, you’ll be plenty a challenge for the youngbloods.” He was smiling when Clare opened his eyes and looked up, and Clare grinned back.

“Does that mean I get the job? Sir?”

“Not yet,” Edric said, but he was still smiling. “Business is slow, what with all the fuss outside. You’ll start your first shift once it simmers down.”

That wasn’t a problem. Clare wasn’t strapped for money, and it’d ensure he wouldn’t have any scheduling conflicts with the last few showings of his musical. “Alright,” Clare said, but Edric wasn’t done.

“And in the meanwhile, because business is slow, I and the others will have time to teach you to fight. As for the cost of your lessons, it will be the same as your hourly pay and deducted from your first month’s wages. The deal is more than fair, I assure you.”

Edric held out his hand firmly enough that Clare knew there would be no haggling him down. “I accept,” Clare said, carefully keeping any traces of grumble out of his voice. Edric was right. Under any other circumstances, lessons would be worth a good deal more than a bartender’s wage.

“Very well. I’ll be expecting you at midday on Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting—”

“Tuesdays won’t work. Sir,” Clare added as Edric raised his brows. “At least not next Tuesday. I have a. . .meeting, and that’s the earliest I’ll have a chance to reschedule.” Assuming Alastor agreed, but he was always oddly polite when he wasn’t being deliberately offensive. He’d settled on Tuesdays in the first place because they were Clare’s day off, and he’d probably agree to reschedule if Clare asked, but that was the problem. Clare didn’t know how to get in touch with him without an appointment, especially not now that he was out of town.

But it wouldn’t matter. “. . .Wednesdays and Fridays, then,” Edric said, and Clare nodded and let out a breath. It only piqued Edric’s curiosity further. “We’ll discuss the details of your contract then, but I must ask, who is it you’re meeting that you would risk your job not a minute after accepting it?”

“The Radio Demon.”

Edric’s lip curled. “That craven sorcerer?”

“That—what?” Clare choked back a chuckle. It wasn’t the first time Clare had heard the accusation, but it had always seemed so laughable. Alastor, craven? The thought was ridiculous, but Edric didn’t hold back an ounce of venom as he went on.

“The coward hides in his tower and refuses to claim the territory that is his by right of conquest. He challenges weaklings and imagines his victories worthy when they are naught but vile magic.

“He’s not,” Clare said, and for a moment he wasn’t sure why. Alastor didn’t need Clare to defend him, but Clare couldn’t seem to let it stand. Maybe it was as simple as trying to right an obvious wrong. Alastor had never told Clare why he wasn’t expanding, and there are as many theories on the wind as demons willing to share them, but Clare could say with absolute certainty that it wasn’t out of fear. “I know him better than you do, sir,” Clare said and held out his dagger. “He’s the one who taught me to use this.”

A flash of understanding crossed Edric's face, finally cracking his skepticism. “I see. That explains much. So he can fight, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, and yet. . . . How odd.” Edric's brows furrowed in confusion.

“Odd? What is?”

_ “How odd _ that a man willing and able to fight would turn to witchery.”

Was it? Alastor’s powers stemmed from soul dealing, and everyone knew it. Magic was magic, Clare had thought, but Edric seemed more offended by their nature than their origin. The knight was centuries older and had had to know more than Clare, but even his confusion was ebbing away by the second. His expression had turned unreadable, somewhere between concern, disapproval, and some unnamed third emotion Clare couldn’t place. his fingers curled reflexively around the hilt of his sword, a nervous habit Clare was starting to know well. “Why, sir?” Clare risked asking anyway.

“‘Why?’” Edric turned to look down on Clare. “If you’re going to interrogate me on demonology, boy, you could have the grace to ply me with drink first.”

Edric turned around and walked to the bar. Something in his posture had Clare convinced that Edric would be drinking soon, on Clare’s tab or not, and that he wouldn’t be any more helpful drunk. A subtle head shake from the bartender was the final straw, and Clare set his sword back on the stand before walking the opposite way toward the door.

“Never mind,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll be here next Wednesday.”

Edric gave him a wave over his shoulder, and it was a confirmation at least that Clare hadn’t lost his new job over a fit of curiosity. Without answers that curiosity wouldn’t fade though. Not as Clare let the door swing shut behind him, not as he turned toward home, and not as the neon lights of Alastor’s domain started to appear around him. Demonology? The more Clare considered it, the more he realized he didn’t have the slightest clue of how demons worked. He’d never been interested in the occult, and he’d never had a head for biology. He reached up to run his hand along a furred ear. Besides the obvious, he’d never thought to compare what was different.

There was one obvious starting point. All demons could heal, therefore all demons had to have some sort of magic. And at least part of it was tied to their souls, since soulbound demons healed slower, but what about the rest? Questions spun through his head of illusions and radio magic and whether Alastor had chosen his powers himself. It didn't take long to get distracted wondering what powers Clare would pick if he had the choice. Flying was obvious, and fire-breathing would be interesting, but before he could think of anything else, his ears perked up at the sound of someone calling his name.

That was twice in as many days that he’d drifted off while walking down the street, but Clare recognized the voice behind him. He took a deep breath, realized how tense he’d been, and let his shoulders drop as he turned around.

“Hey, Quince.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray, I'm not dead! It's been a time trying to get used to my new work schedule, but I'm starting to get back in the swing of things. I still don't have much of a buffer, though, so for the foreseeable future, I'll try to stick to updating monthly.


	6. Equivalent Exchange

Clare had never seen the broadcasting station's receptionist outside her post in the lobby, but she was dressed the same as always—blouse, blazer, and skirt—and was heading in its direction. Starting her shift, probably, or coming back from lunch. The timing lined up, and Clare slowed his pace until Quince was beside him. As she passed, she sped up, and Clare had to half-jog a few steps to catch up.

“You don’t have to put on the chivalrous act,” she said. “No one’ll touch me who knows where I work.”

Chivalry, huh. Ironic given Clare had just met a bonafide knight, but that wasn't his intent. Silence would be better than starting an argument though, and after a few seconds, the click of her heels slowed to a steady pace. “How is it going?” he asked.

Quince huffed. “What, work? Slow now that the Bossman's magicking up his broadcasts instead of making us do it. But that's a good thing. We lost a few in the Cleanse, and we're still. . .oh! Weren’t you looking for a job?”

“As of ten minutes ago, no! I’m on my way back from a successful interview.”

Clare's grin was wide when she looked over, but her eyes flicked down to his shoulder. The cut there was shallow, but his fur hadn't stopped the blood from spotting his shirt. That was a shame, but it was his own fault for not thinking to take it off. Edric wouldn’t have minded. He didn’t cover every inch of skin like Alastor did, to the point where Clare felt underdressed in trousers and a button-up. Hell, it might have scored Clare bonus points in the interview if he’d shown he was prepared to fight, not that it mattered in the end. Clare frowned and pressed a hand to the stain, but before he could say anything, Quince took the move as a self-conscious one.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me. It’s a long story, I get it. I’ve got a contract saying my ass needs to be in the lobby in five minutes, but if you want to talk. I'll drag out a chair for you. Not like anyone’ll be stopping in today.”

“It’s not.”

“Not what?” Quince stopped with her hand on the front door of the station.

“Do you know the Goose and Hatchet?”

She blinked slowly and tilted her head. “The what?”

“Then maybe it is a long story.” Clare sighed and pulled the door open. “After you.”

Quince rolled her eyes again but chuckled as she stepped inside and made her way across the lobby and into the hall. True to her word, the place was deserted, and Clare listened to the clip of his shoes echoing through the room as he paced back and forth.

It was bizarre to stand in Alastor’s station and know he wasn’t here. Opening the door had set a familiar anticipation twisting in Clare’s gut, and the lingering adrenaline from his interview wasn’t helping. Still, Clare had learned long ago how to deal with nerves. Slow breaths, in and out, while he forced every muscle to relax one at a time. He was here for a chat, nothing more.

Taking Quince up on her offer was an impulsive decision. They’d talked a few times since the day Alastor had almost missed their weekly meeting, but never for long. Never more than the couple of minutes Clare saved when the streetlights were in his favor, not that waiting for them was any guarantee with how people drove down here. ‘Hey. What’s your name?’ Quince said one day as he stood twiddling his thumbs, and the rest was history. Specifically, a history of curious stares thrown back and forth when they thought the other wasn’t looking.

Today was a chance to change that. In Hell, friends could be found in the unlikeliest of places, as Clare had learned all too well. Maybe today they could both get answers to their questions.

Quince was up first. “So, what’s the Goose and Hatchet?” she asked as she hauled over a chair for Clare. It took a minute to explain, but by the end, she was nodding along. “So you’re going to be what? A bartender?”

“Bartender-cum-swordfighter,” Clare confirmed. “But what about you? Anything new in your life?”

“Oh, not much,” Quince chuckled. “I’m moving in with one of the boys in the sound department next weekend. It’s so hard to find someone down here worth keeping, but you know how it is. Your love life’s got to be plenty more interesting than mine.” She finished with an inquisitive look, but there was nothing to spill.

“My what?” Clare asked, and she rolled her eyes.

“The Radio Demon? Hell of a choice, but he ain’t bad on the eyes, and he knows how to show a gal a good time—or a guy, I guess. If you like that kind of thing, I—”

“Whoa! No!” If the lobby wasn’t empty, everyone would have turned their heads. Clare almost shouted it, and he crossed his arms in front of him as he struggled for anything other than emphatic denial. “No! No, no, no. He’s teaching me to fight! Not. . .” Clare trailed off. It didn’t bear thinking of, let alone putting into words.

At least Quince had the decency to look embarrassed, blushing a darker blue and averting a few of her eyes. “Oh. Well. Sorry for the misunderstanding. And, um, for any looks you get around here before I can clear things up. It won’t take long, promise. We’re a tight-knit bunch here, and I don’t think it got to anyone outside the station unless you. . .uh. . .” She paused, taking in Clare’s incredulous stare, then looked away and swerved off onto a tangent. “Anyway. I thought you said you didn’t make a deal with the Boss.”

“I didn’t.”

“Right, but if you’re getting lessons, what’re you giving in exchange? You don’t get to be a dealmaker doing favors out of the goodness of your heart.” She pointed over her shoulder at the rest of the station behind her. “We know that damn well around here.”

“Nothing,” Clare said, but her brows only inched higher. “I mean it. He dragged me into it. Set the time and place and left before I could say a thing. What was I going to do? _Not_ show up?”

She stared for a few seconds longer, scanning Clare as if they could find a hole in his reasoning, then let out a sigh. “This made more sense when I thought you were fucking him.”

And that was yet another mental image that Clare did not want to have. “Quince, please,” he muttered. “Please stop talking about it. I don’t need that kind of nightmare hanging over me.”

A hint of mischief lit up her eyes. “Nightmare? Accurate maybe, but that’s not very nice to call him.” The smile reached her mouth as Clare’s fell open in horror. “Oh, what’s the matter? I think you two look good together. And he seems like a cat person.”

“Very funny,” Clare muttered, but this time he couldn’t help but crack a smile as it set her cackling again. “How are you so casual about it?” he asked when she was done. “He’s the Radio Demon. He stole your soul.”

Quince shrugged. “‘Stole’s a harsh word. He’s my boss, and he’s no slave driver. Sure I can’t quit, but why would I want to? With the life I had, this is as close to Heaven as I’m ever gonna get. Steady job, a place to live, and I even found me a man who’s not a complete ass.” She smiled at Clare. “And as long as I stick around here, there’ll be plenty of folks around worth talking to.”

And finally it was Clare’s turn to ask a question he’d been wondering for months. If there was one thing he’d learned in the circus, it was that a soul deal was the worst of miserable fates. Worse than anything. Worse than death, but Alastor had turned all the rules upside-down, hadn’t he?

“Then you don’t regret it?” Clare asked.

“Regret it? Nah. I’d do it all over again.”

“But—”

Quince took a deep breath and sat up in her chair. “Look, I’m a receptionist, and you’re not the first who’s come here for answers. It’s my job to give them, so I’ll tell you what I tell everyone else.

“When most of us sinners drop down here, we’ve got nothing. Just our minds, bodies, and souls, and one way or another, we’ve got to sell something to get our footing. People say nothing’s permanent but a soul deal, but you’ll be just as miserable in centuries of debt and killing yourself for a living. Just look at the mess outside. They’re finally starting to realize. Down here, any deal can screw you over, and any deal can be worth it, even selling your soul. You’ve just got to be sure what you want and who can give it to you.

“As for me, I’m easy. All I want’s a simple life. It’s more than I thought I’d have before I made the deal, and between you, the Bossman, and everyone else, there’s enough crazy on the sidelines that I get my fill just sitting here. No offense.”

* * *

Clare expected Nick to be gone by the time he got home. It was his usual pattern—stay for a catch-up chat and a night’s rest, then drive off the next day. It was no surprise when Clare walked in to find a note on the counter, but he smiled at its contents.

_Going to a meeting. Back by dinner._

It was a welcome change even if it was only for today, and it’d give Clare a chance to tell him about the new job. It also gave Clare a chance to get a second opinion on his cooking. He’d taken the plunge and stepped up from rice, pasta, and pan-fried meat. If there was one thing he’d made sure to stock up on, it was eggs, and recently he’d even graduated from scrambled to omelets.

It was still women’s work on the surface, but that wasn’t a useful concept in Hell. Up there, it was safe to make assumptions. Men were the breadwinners and women the housekeepers, but down below, it was a mistake to rely on anyone. Reliance meant trust, and trust was something few sinners deserved. In Hell, women found jobs, and Clare learned to do his laundry and branch out from toast and spaghetti with canned sauce. If the Radio Demon could do it, then so could Clare.

And it earned an approving chuckle from Nick when he finally strolled in. “Well, something smells good, Clare,” he said, pausing the tune he’d been whistling. “You didn’t even burn it this time. Beats me why you’re cooking now, but at least you’ve stopped stinking up the kitchen.”

It was a backhanded compliment, but Nick’s voice was light with humor, and Clare laughed along. “You think? Maybe I should try a roast next. Jan gave me a tip the other day, and—”

Clare paused as Nick shushed him and held up his hand. His head turned toward the radio, and after a moment he walked over to scribble some notes on a piece of paper. “I missed the last ten minutes walking over,” he explained. “Didn’t realize he was back up north. Not looking good for old Jonesy, but them’s the breaks. He’s the one who picked Barrow Downs. Should’ve known ol’ Byron would start erasing eventually.”

“Lord Byrus,” Clare corrected, as though he hadn’t first heard the name only minutes ago. He’d been tempted to switch to a station with music when the screaming started, but the sound was familiar by now, his hands were dirty from cooking, and for once Alastor wasn’t the one responsible.

“Byron, Byrus, whatever. Not my area, not my problem, and it’s not going to be anyone’s problem in an hour at this. . . . Wait. Is he serious?”

Clare followed Nick’s gaze back to the radio, picking words out of what had become background noise. After a moment he heard the voice again—the one that had caught Nick’s attention—and this time Clare followed along.

_“Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking to you, Mister Radio Demon. I don’t give a crap about that reporter baloney you’re spouting. If you’re not out of my territory in the next five minutes I’ll fill you with more holes than I’ve put in all your fucking flunkies here combined!”_

Nick clicked his tongue, but Alastor spoke before he could say anything.

 _Hm. That wouldn’t be very many, now would it? I can’t seem to find any of_ my _flunkies in this delightful mess of yours, but that’s for the—_

 _“Oh, go jump off a bridge! No one’s falling for it! To all you idiots tuning in, you think it’s a_ coincidence _this all started when he showed up? You think he’s been hopping between riots for, what, journalistic integrity? Like Hell! I know you’ve been giving orders, but you know what? I’m a reasonable kind of guy, and it’s not my problem unless you do it here.”_

_Then it’s settled! You can get back to slaughtering your problems away, and I won’t give a single order. Go on. I wouldn’t dream of standing in the way of a good show._

_“Are you blind?”_

_No, I don’t think so, but—_

_“Oh? Just stupid, then.”_

But, _the audience at home is, if you’d be so kind._

 _“You know what, fine. This here is celestial steel. Angel spears. And since you’re new around here and an idiot to boot, these’ll kill you for good. Deader than dead, so you can wipe that smug look off your face and—”_ With a hiss of static, a snatch of distorted music, and a gargled choke, the voice cut off.

_Exactly, and that makes this self-defense. I was only here to observe, but in a battle of deadly force, the winner is the first to strike. It’s a tad abrupt for my tastes, but every show has its fans, and my! It seems you all want an encore!_

Alastor’s voice warped on the last word, and the growing cheers went quiet. Clare could almost hear the record scratch.

_No? Hm, suit yourselves. Now, would you look at this mess? Celestial steel all over the street. Someone could get themselves erased, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Where’s the drama, the resurrection, the revenge plot? No, I’ll be taking these for safekeeping, I think. And as for the rest of you—_

Alastor went on, but it was covered up by Nick’s scoff. “Great. Now the guy has angel spears. Fucking hell. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate.” He raised a brow as Clare set a plate of omelet down in front of him, trying to decide if the timing was a joke. In the end, he just shook his head.

“Why’s it a bad thing?” Clare asked as he grabbed his own plate. “People already think he’s on your side. If they know he has celestial steel, maybe they’ll think twice before messing with your riots.”

“Hah. You think so? ‘Cause my bet is Lord Bison wakes up, crawls out of the crater the Radio Demon put him in, realizes his manor got sacked while he was dead, and starts killing anyone he can get his hands on, celestial steel or no.” He paused for a moment to stick a forkful in his mouth, then swallowed too quickly as he went on. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe everyone takes a step back and we get an extra day or two, but that’s it. Every area that’s doomed is still doomed, and the most promising one—mine—is worse off for it. This isn’t half bad, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Clare said by habit, but it was the rest of what Nick said that mattered. This was the second time he’d mentioned it. “What do you mean, ‘your area?’ Aren’t you supposed to be working together?”

Nick almost choked on his drink. “What, in Hell?” he said when he was done laughing. “Yeah right. The only way to work together here’s to make sure everyone gets their piece of the pie and they get it all to themselves. We’ll work together on timing and funding and messaging, but we’ve all got our irons in the fire. Everyone’s got their pet rebellion, and who cares if most of them go sour? All we need is one to work—just one little corner of Hell to keep for ourselves, and we can start proving to everyone else that we’re right.”

Clare took a mouthful and hummed to keep his mouth shut. There was no arguing with Nick when he was like this, caught up in his ideas and waving his fork around like a baton and a gavel. Not that Clare knew enough to argue the point or had any interest in doing so in the first place. For all his enthusiasm and all his willingness to answer Clare’s questions, Nick had never tried to recruit him. He’d left himself a home—place to relax without having to debate anyone—and Clare would gladly do his part to keep it that way.

Nick said it often enough. Hear a message enough times and it’d start to sound like the truth, no matter what it was. He’d been talking about old military propaganda, but it wasn’t hard to see the parallels. It’d work to Nick’s advantage too, and on top of that, there was no denying that Nick had been the one to rescue Clare from Azarrien’s circus. Even if the debt really was square after a few months of rent-free living, it would still lend Nick’s words weight if he chose to use it.

But he hadn’t. Not at the start, not while Clare was between jobs, and not now that he was more content than ever with his afterlife. He had a home, a promising job, a roommate who was only sometimes obnoxious—about the best one could hope for in Hell—and a growing web of friends and acquaintances. It’d be treading in dangerous territory to ask for too many details—to hear enough that Clare picked a side involuntarily—but the background radio and clink of silverware only accentuated the silence at the table. After almost a minute of trying not to fidget, Clare risked a question.

“You said everyone had their areas? Which one’s yours?”

“Heretic’s Row. On the north bank of Pandemonium. It was on the news yesterday.”

Was it? The name sounded familiar, but the news had become a blur of names and places days ago. It was a wonder Alastor could keep them straight. Clare could barely remember a single one an hour after hearing it. For Pandemonium to stand out, he must have heard it somewhere else.

“Any updates since then?” Clare asked, and Nick raised a brow like he was impressed Clare knew the place. Or maybe he was just calling Clare’s bluff since he sighed and started from the beginning.

“It’s one of the territories where the local overlord disappeared after the Cleanse. The consensus by now is she’s dead for good, but it’s not like anyone looked for a body before laying a claim. Last I checked we’ve got four players vying for her turf. Four and a half really, depending on who’s counting. Anyway, we’re in negotiations with three of them and eyeing the half, just in case.” Nick sighed again and poked his fork at the omelet. “I wish I could be there, but party leadership voted to hide out until the worst is over. Can’t get ourselves decapitated now, and I’ve got my best guy on the job. Ex-lawyer. He could talk Lucifer himself into a settlement, and we’ve been preparing for weeks. He’ll get it done.”

“Get what done?”

“What do you think? A deal with whichever player gives us the best odds. Assuming they don’t get scared off thinking we’re in cahoots with the Radio Demon.” Nick huffed and shook his head. “Anyway, the moment they sign, we call off the riots in their area. They get to stop fighting on two fronts, and we get a de-facto military. They handle the outside threats and expand all they want, and we take care of the paperwork. The taxes, the bureaucracy, and all those minutiae their type doesn’t bother with anyway.”

It all sounded very familiar. “You’re copying Alastor?”

That got Nick to look up from his omelet. “You’re calling him by name now?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Clare said and cursed the defensiveness he couldn’t keep out of his voice. The two held gazes across the table before Nick shrugged and took another bite.

“Whatever. Don’t say no one warned you,” he said through his food, then swallowed and got back to Clare’s question. “Anyway, why shouldn’t we copy this place? It’s turning out half decent, and that’s with everyone throwing money at costumes and neon. Imagine what it’d be like with some proper economists on the job.”

The honor of his old profession was on the line, and Clare defended it despite the unease lingering in the back of his mind. He was missing something, but he muttered, “sour grapes,” under his breath and restarted the one debate they didn’t mind rehashing—the one about the value of theater and Nick's dismissiveness being a excuse for missing out. It was an old argument full of well-rehearsed points, and it lasted easily through dinner. It went on as Clare gathered their plates and Nick unfolded his newspaper, and it was as Clare relaxed in the familiarity that he remembered. He knew where he’d heard the name Pandemonium—knew where and when Nick had said it—and the timing didn’t add up.

“Nick,” he said, and Nick looked up from his newspaper. “You said you’ve been planning this for weeks?”

“Yeah. Stockpiling food and weapons, marking targets, getting our terms written down, and about twenty other things. Why?”

“And that’s where you were coming back from. Right after the Cleanse. Pandemonium.”

Nick groaned at the memory. “God, it was a hell of a trip too. It took so long we were sleeping in shifts, but we kept having to get out and push cars out of the road. What about it?”

Clare could have kept asking questions. He could have tried to corner Nick until he had no choice but to answer honestly. Alastor had demonstrated the technique enough times that Clare knew he could pull it off himself. ‘Why choose Pandemonium? Why Heretic’s Row? What was your plan if the overlord hadn't died?’ After all this time, Nick wouldn't have left it to simple chance.

But Nick deserved a chance to explain without being manipulated into it, and Clare sighed, looked him in the eye, and said it straight.

“Did you have her killed?”

For a moment everything was silent. Even the radio seemed like so much static against the crinkle of Nick folding his newspaper into his lap. “Clare,” he said eventually. “You can’t blame me for everything. People die in the Cleanse all the time. Even overlords. That’s the point. And even if I did, so what? You don’t know her, and if you did, you’d be the first to tell me she had it coming.”

There was nothing left to say to that, and Nick picked up his newspaper, straightened it with an exaggerated flick, and lowered his head.

* * *

If Nick and Clare spent the weekend avoiding each other, it wasn’t intentional. Nick was out in the mornings for his secret meetings, and in the evenings Clare had the last showings of his musical. It wasn’t intentional, but neither of them complained, at least not to each other. It was only as the weekend passed, Monday came and went, and Clare joined the side cast in a bar for the after-party that he finally put the thought into words.

"I think. . ." he started, then hesitated and took another gulp of whatever was in his mug. Some sort of beer, but he'd lost track of who was ordering what around five drinks in. "I think my roommate might've killed someone," he whispered in a nearby ear. Whispering was safer, and this was Arjun. The one Clare had spent all this time not killing with his prop knife. Arjun would stay quiet.

"You need a place to lay low?" he hissed back, and Clare stared at him confused before putting it together.

"No, no. I'm fine. Perfectly safe," he said, no longer whispering. "It's just. . .odd. Don't you think it's odd? Knowing someone who. . .you know."

"Not really," Arjun said. "I know you, and you've done it." Clare's eyes flew wider until Arjun tacked on, "Technically. You were the one holding the knife.”

Of course. He didn't know. He was talking about that first night they'd met Alastor, but he was missing the point.

"I don't mean like that. I mean. . ." Clare leaned in close again, the words low and under his breath. "He had someone _killed._ For good. I think."

Arjun's mouth made an O of comprehension. Then he shrugged. "Hm. That is odd. What makes you think he did it?" he asked and took a drink as if it was no more than idle gossip.

Maybe it was. It wasn't worse than anything the Radio Demon had done. If Clare wanted to start setting limits, he'd be better off starting there or, better yet, with himself. No one here was innocent, even if some were louder about their crimes than others. “Just a hunch,” Clare said, and for the rest of the night, he let the nose push his worries aside. There were more cheers and more toasts, and when Clare woke the next morning, Nick was already gone.

There were still a few hours until Clare's usual Tuesday appointment, and he spent them dipping into the dwindling supply of coffee, nursing his hangover, and setting out to arrive at the station half an hour early. The lobby was empty as usual, save for one woman.

"Clare," she said and waved to the chair she'd left out since their last chat.

"Quince," he said. "Anything new?"

And with that, off she went about her beau putting up new wallpaper while they were still unpacking, even though she was sick of living out of boxes. They’d been bickering about it for days—good-naturedly, she assured him—but Quince still smiled at the chance to vent to someone who couldn’t care less but would nod along anyway. All of it was so painfully, beautifully mundane, and Clare spent the whole time smiling right back despite the headache.

He’d missed this. For years he’d missed it and hadn’t even realized. It was nothing but a casual chat and a simple problem that wasn’t life or death. No plots or deals with overlords or souls on the line. No vices or sins, just a woman’s fond exasperation with her partner, and it was no more extraordinary than Clare’s attempts at cooking. Quince’s looks had never been hard to read despite the blue skin and extra eyes, but nowadays Clare barely noticed the strangeness. For just a few minutes, it was almost enough to forget he was in Hell.

But there was no getting away from that truth, not for long. As the sound of a distant bell echoed through the front door, Clare slid his chair back and bid Quince adieu. The last he saw was her raising a hand, but he waved and strode off down the impossible hallway, only to take a left and end up right back in the lobby.

“Should’ve known better, hon,” she chuckled and pointed to the radio. “The Bossman’s still off playing reporter.”

“He’s. . .” He wasn’t here. For the first time, Alastor was late and without an airtight excuse. No sudden threats to his life or people or domain. Nothing but the riots and his love of violence.

 _. . .but that’s the thing about setting fire to a cartel stronghold. You never know if you’ll get a colorful fire from the chemicals or an explosive one!_ The broadcast went on, but it went one ear and out the other. He was still in Bloodstone Court, still watching the fires spread and making headway on tracking them down to the source. It was still in Pentagram city, sure, but miles away on the other end.

“Today is Tuesday, right?” Clare said weakly, as if the alternative was any better. Alastor would surely make him regret it if he’d gotten so drunk he’d slept through the whole day, but somehow that thought was easier to stomach. He’d regret it, Clare knew, and the consequences would be dire, but he’d understand. He’d know his mistake, but as Quince gave him a slow nod, he only felt adrift.

“Don’t take it too hard,” she said. “The Boss is a fickle guy. You learn that working for him. One minute you’ve got his full focus, and boy ain’t that an experience? Then the next you’re yesterday’s news. He’s got places to be and riots to cover. Hell, I’m surprised he even showed up last—” Quince cut herself off, but it didn’t matter. Clare already knew. “You need a minute?” she finished

Clare didn’t answer as he dropped into the chair. Now what? It’d be polite to wait a while in case Alastor realized he’d lost track of time, but Alastor hadn’t complained the last time Clare left. How could he? He’d executed enough people for bad manners that it’d be the height of hypocrisy to blame Clare for responding to one rudeness with another. Not that hypocrisy had stopped him before. Anyway, there was no reason to stay, and yet. . .

“Would you mind if I stuck around for a while?” Clare asked, and Quince raised her brows.

 _“I_ don’t mind, but you don’t have to wait if he’s not—”

“It’s not that.” Clare shook his head and forced a smile. “It looks like I suddenly have some free time, and we were having a good talk. At least tell me he let you pick out the wallpaper.”

“Ha! You bet he did, but only after the first day. He brought home some atrocious floral pattern that clashed with all our furniture. He said he got it cheap from a friend, but here’s a word of advice. When you’re buying garbage, it doesn’t matter how cheap it is.”

Clare let himself chuckle along, and slowly the broadcast faded back into ambient noise. The conversation flowed from interior design to where they’d lived—a small home in Baton Rouge and an apartment in New York—and for once the past didn’t hurt. The bad times were far outnumbered by the small, everyday moments. The colors of Jule’s room and the living room where Clare had slept. The view from the kitchen and the kids who waved from the third-floor window across the street. The pulse of life in the city, and the comforting strangeness of knowing you could meet someone and never see them again. It made pickpocketing that much easier, but Clare glossed over that in favor of painting a picture of the subway.

“It’s more crowded in the morning, but I wasn’t working then.” Not officially anyway. The bustle of the crowd made for a good distraction. “Maybe I got sick a couple of times, but I. . .people die all the time from car crashes. I’ll take the subway over traffic any—”

 _And now, my dear audience, I have for you a proposition,_ Alastor said, and at the word, ‘you,’ Clare’s ears perked up. Alastor’s tone had shifted—cheery as ever, but artificially so, almost to the point of mockery. _I’d like you all to keep this one question in mind: ‘How many times have I been here before?’ We’ve all had to get used to a few changes down here, and I for one am deeply enjoying a number of them. Claws, for example. Wonderfully versatile, and oh so convenient. . ._

“Clare. It’s just an ad read,” Quince said with a sigh, and Clare almost shushed her before he realized the truth of it.

_Sadly my furniture disagrees with my assessment, which is why I’d like to tell you about Captain Oldward’s Miracle Varnish! Just one coat and the difference is clear—no more stains or unsightly scratches—and it can be yours for a measly sum of two dollars!_

“Look, maybe you should go home, Clare,” she said. “Go home and stay there, now that you’ve got an excuse. Here.” She flipped over a flyer and slid it over to him. “Give me your address, and I’ll stop by after my shift, make sure you’re doing alright. Just don’t. . .”

She bit her lip and trailed off, but the sympathy was written all over her face, the concern sharp as the crease of her brows. Clare opened his mouth, not sure what to say, but he didn’t get the chance to decide. In an instant, the crease was gone. Her brows flew up then settled to a neutral smile seconds before Clare heard the rush of shadows. For a moment the ad read echoed through the room in duplicate, desynchronized by half a second until a snap of Alastor’s fingers silenced the radio. He set his cane down with a tap, and it stayed stood upright as Alastor strolled over to the desk.

“Ah, Caeden! I’d hoped you’d still be here! We haven’t a second to spare.”

The words were layered on top of his own voice coming from his cane, still listing the merits of furniture varnish, and finally Clare knew how he’d been broadcasting so consistently from the start of the riots. If the realization showed, Alastor ignored it entirely.

“No time for a lesson today, I’m afraid,” he went on, “but that’s just as well! It’s a perfect chance to give you the good news. Congratulations! You’ve graduated!” He thrust his hand out as party horns and confetti poppers played in the background, but Clare was still frozen.

“Does that. . . ? What about next Tuesday?”

Alastor pulled his hand back, still unshaken, and gave it a wave. “Oh, you’re free to stop by then or whenever else you’d like! No guarantee I’ll be here, of course, but you’ll always have one way to know if I’m not.” He finished his wave with a gesture at the radio, then crossing his arm in front in a hint of a bow. “And if I am around, I’m always happy to entertain.”

His eyes stayed focused on Clare, wide and unblinking, and his head tilted as one second then another passed in silence. It was just a taste of what the people put on the spot by Alastor’s sudden interviews felt. Stillness suited Alastor like fire to explosives. Hesitate a moment too long, and all bets were off. Clare only held out a second longer before forcing a reply.

“Then. . .that’s it?”

Alastor’s face lit up as his smile stretched impossibly wide. “Why of course not! We can’t forget your graduation gift.” He twirled his wrist, and from behind his hand appeared a dagger in a simple sheath.

“Oh, I. . .” Clare gestured at the blade already at his hip, the one he’d bought on Wednesday, right after the last time he’d seen Alastor. “I already—”

“No worries. This one’s special.” Alastor narrowed his eyes and held the hilt forward. “See for yourself.”

The foreboding was sharp enough to cut as Clare reached out, but there was no other choice. His fingers wrapped around the grip, but he only managed to pull an inch of it free before he yanked his hand back as if burned. He’d never seen that silver sheen before, but he knew it. Every iota of him wanted to recoil away and never look at the blade again, let alone touch it. Not the hilt, not the flat, and especially, absolutely never the edge.

“I can’t.”

“Oh, no, Caeden. There’s no can or can’t. This is a gift. It’s yours to accept.” He held the dagger out a few inches farther, and no matter how cheery his words—no matter that it was still sheathed and pointed at Alastor—it was undeniably a threat. Then in a blink, he pulled it away. “It’s real, you know,” he said as if that was ever in question. The dagger was still loose in the sheath, and with a flick of his wrist, Alastor sent it arcing up through the air. Clare tracked it as it spun, his gaze drawn to that deathly silver like a compass needle as it settled in Alastor’s hand—even as his other hand came into view, and Clare realized far too late what he was planning. A fingertip pressed against the point of the dagger and slid along the edge, and the silver was stained with red. “See?” Alastor said, and of course Clare saw. He couldn’t drag his eyes from the cut if he’d wanted to. It didn’t seal in seconds as Alastor’s wounds always had, and a trickle of blood ran along his palm and dripped to the ground.

Then he flicked the dagger back into its sheath, and the spell was broken. Alastor stuck the finger in his mouth as Clare stammered an answer. “I— Thank you, but I can’t. . .I don’t need it.” It was one thing to be ready for a fight, but this was celestial steel. It was for mortal enemies, not the odd street brawl. It was for people like Alastor, who could get away with using the big guns by virtue of his magic being almost as terrifying. “If it’s real, you should keep it,” Clare finished, and Alastor let out a laugh.

“Me? For what? Where’s the fun in erasing my rivals?” He chuckled again as he shook his head. “No, I need it even less than you say you do, and what else is one to do with an unexpected windfall but spread it around? I’m sure we’d all rather see this in your hands than on the black market.”

As if there wasn’t already reason enough not to take it, that was yet another. Angel blades had price tags with far too many zeros for Clare to ever dream of owning one. “It’s too much,” he said, a last-ditch effort. “I can’t take something so valuable.”

“You’re rejecting my gift?”

“I—”

Alastor’s stare shut down anything Clare could have said long before it reached his mouth. Every line of thought drew a blank as Alastor pushed the dagger into Clare’s hands, and it was either take it or pull away and face the consequences. Clare’s hand wrapped around the hilt, and as long as it was still sheathed, it was frighteningly natural. A closer look revealed why. The grip and guard were almost identical to the illusory dagger Alastor had always summoned for him.

“Why?” he asked, barely more than a whisper, and Alastor smiled and patted Clare’s shoulder as he circled around him.

“Why, it’s simple. I have a knack for picking interesting people, Caeden Clare, and one of these days you’ll make all of this worth my while!” Alastor spun with his arms held wide across the station then stopped on a dime, facing Clare and leaning in close. “You’ll see soon enough, I’m sure, and so will I. That’s why.”

He held out a finger to poke at Clare’s chest, and Clare was all too aware of the slowly healing cut still leaking blood—of the stain spreading across the middle of his shirt. Stillness didn’t suit Alastor. That was the only way Clare knew it was seconds that he held his breath, not the minute it felt like before Alastor pulled away. Alastor’s cane flew into his hand, and he gave it a twirl as shadows danced around him.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, my time is almost up,” he said, and with a rush of darkness he was gone. The shadows swirled as they carried him away, and Clare could have sworn Alastor’s eyes were the final part of him to vanish, unblinking and pinning Clare to the last.

The radio was still off, and Clare didn’t know how long it was until Quince broke the silence. He’d almost forgotten she was there at all.

“Well shit,” she muttered. “I’d say congratulations, but I’m sorry’s probably better.”

“Sorry for what?” Clare asked. His voice shook on the last word. Sorry for giving him a reason to stick around? He’d asked for it himself, and she’d tried to warn him off at the end. Sorry in the sympathetic sense for catching Alastor’s eye? For the roller coaster of excitement and horror that entailed? After the first few drops Clare thought he’d gotten used to it. He'd even started enjoying the ride, but he’d ignored the warning signs. Nothing in Hell was free, and that was one rule even Alastor wouldn’t break. What could Clare ever have expected from a dealmaker other than a vast debt piling invisibly over his head?

Clare couldn’t begin to guess what entertainment Alastor expected to get out of him or why it needed an angel blade, but it sounded like Alastor didn’t know either. What if he was wrong? What if Clare went on to live an afterlife as mundane as Quince’s and buried the dagger deep in his sock drawer? What then? Would Alastor find his payment another way?

Would he resort to taking it in blood? A shiver ran down Clare’s spine, and Quince’s answer wasn’t any comfort.

“Sorry for everything. Between all of us at the station and a few outside, we’ve pieced together most of the Boss’s old life. When he said he had a knack for picking people, he meant it. Those people he’s picked? All of them ended up dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blech. So much expository dialogue in this chapter. In general really. I'm absolutely a worldbuilder thinly disguised as a fanfic writer at this point.
> 
> Promise there'll be actual plot soon, but for now the setup.


	7. A Warrior's Weight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter because it's a bit shorter, and I got tired of sitting on it.

Alastor's gift came with a sheath, and the sheath came with a clasp that fastened snugly to Clare's belt. With his shirt untucked, no one would know he had celestial steel pressed against the small of his back. After a few blocks of keeping his eyes peeled for observers, Clare almost lost track of it himself.

The weight wasn't off-center like the dagger at his hip. It didn't sway with his steps or brush against his leg, and it wasn't meant to be noticed. It was invisible, quietly deadly, and the polar opposite of everything Alastor represented. Giving it as a gift was his perfect way of tossing out an unwanted hassle and putting Clare further in the hole. Two birds with one stone.

And speaking of two birds, wearing a jacket would keep Clare from looking like an untucked vagabond and make the dagger easier to draw. He’d only need to slip a hand around his side instead of reaching under his shirt. Clare could see it in his mind’s eye, in the part of him that strung together poses and dance moves without missteps or wasted motion. It’d be efficient, elegant, and completely out of the question. He couldn’t. He couldn’t erase someone. Clare knew the motions—he could close his eyes and see them play out, easy as a simple waltz—but the thought had him clutching his arms to his chest in revulsion.

But why? He’d walked down this street not even a week ago contemplating murder, and he hadn't changed his mind. His hand fell to his hip just as easily. The vision hadn't faded of seeing red and with a single strike ridding himself of the cause. It didn’t rankle any more than before, so what was it that made Alastor's gift so wrong? It wouldn’t feel any different. Same parting of flesh under Clare's blade. Same spill of blood, and the same dead weight of a body collapsing at his hands. None of it changed whether they were killed or erased, and Clare knew he could cope. He’d done it twice now. Both times had been sickening enough to gag, but he’d made it through. The blood washed off the stage and off his shoes and hands until nothing remained but assurance. He’d had no choice the second time, but the first. . . . If he could relive it, he’d do it all over again. He’d do the right thing.

The right thing. The moment the words came to him, Clare knew they were the key, but there again lay the question, ‘Why?’ It was a simple one, easy as opening his mouth, and it had just as simple an answer. He didn’t want to die.

Ordinary death cut deep enough—that bleak, endless nothingness. The nightmares had lingered a full week after he died. Night after night Clare had woken up gasping for breath and savoring every one. The sound of air catching on his teeth, the rise and fall of his chest, and the cold sweat matting his fur—all were proof he was still alive. Even if he died, he’d still come back. Even if he had to face that void again, he’d always wake up in the end.

Unless he didn’t. When it came to erasure, there was no way to know. No one ever came back from it, and afterlight didn’t work in Hell. Was it more of the same, or would it be a truer nothing? Would he be a candle burning forever in the void, or would he be snuffed in an instant, never to feel again? If he ever found out, it’d be too late.

If erasure was more terrifying than death, there was no doubt it was the greater crime. It’d be a leaden weight on his soul, he thought, then shook his head. No. His soul didn’t matter, not anymore. What harm could any sin do when he was already damned? It wouldn’t be a weight on his soul then, but on his conscience. On his mind and his heart.

His mouth twisted into a scowl. Coward. A weight on his conscience? Was that all it took for him to stand back? It’d be easier, so much easier, but nothing would change, not if he wouldn’t cross the line and change it himself. Everyone here lived in loops, and Clare was no dealmaker. Even if he hated someone enough to want them dead—even if he went through with it and killed them himself—the only lesson they’d learn would be to avoid him. Clare had only one way to touch their souls. One very permanent way.

‘So?’ a part of him fought back. Was he supposed to play policeman for all of Hell? He’d better start with Alastor then, move on to Nick, and off himself next for good measure.

But what else was he meant to do? Let people live who he hated enough to kill? It’d defeat the very purpose of killing them. And if he held back—if he turned his head, coddled his already stained conscience, and let sinners keep getting away with atrocities so long as they stayed away from him—wouldn’t that be the height of selfishness?

And would that be so wrong?

“Clare. _Clare.”_

“Huh?”

That was Nick’s voice, but since when had Nick gotten back? And since when had Clare? His tail flicked and brushed against the cushions of the couch he sat on, but he couldn’t remember climbing the stairs to his apartment or opening the door. Or much of the walk back at all, for that matter. 

“‘Huh?’ Guy walks in looking like the world’s about to end, and that’s all he has to say? ‘Huh?’” Clare followed the voice to find Nick standing by the radio, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So what happened? It’s Tuesday, right? Your guy broke up with you?”

“What? No! Why does everyone think—?” Clare trailed off into a sigh, but then Nick raised a brow. It slid right up under his forehead plate in the most perfectly nonplussed expression Clare had ever seen, and it was too much. All of it too absurd, too much to hold, and too much to think about, so he stopped. Clare’s sigh slipped into a chuckle, then something higher as his thoughts slid down the path of least resistance.

Him and Alastor? Ridiculous. Alastor and anyone? It was just as inconceivable. He was too high and too condescending for it—off in a world of his own, well-lit and distant as the stage across the orchestra pit. Try to join him there and he’d flip the script. Vanish into smoke, or shadows more like. Give a round of applause from a theater box and pretend he’d been the director all along. And no matter how packed the hall, he always ended up on an island. Always at the heart of a gap in the crowd, even as all eyes turned to him. It was almost funny. Clare pressed a hand to his mouth, but still the giggles wouldn’t stop, and he raised the other to wipe a tear from his eye.

Oh god, he’d lost it. If there’d been any doubt before, surely today was enough to drive a stake through its heart. He’d made it home without realizing, sat on the couch without feeling the dagger wedged between his back and the cushions, and now even Nick was staring at him in utter bafflement. Nick, who’d been second only to Alastor in taking their world in stride, Nick who never missed a chance to throw a quip Clare’s way. “Sorry,” Clare managed between giggles, then buried his face in his hands. “Sorry, sorry,” he went on, not just because he couldn’t stop laughing but because the insanity was spreading like a virus. It all started with Alastor, and it must have been weeks ago that Clare first caught it. Poor Nick. He’d avoided it for so long only to fall victim after a few days home.

“You need a drink, Clare?” he asked after a moment. “Or is that just gonna make this worse?”

Ah, there was the quip, or close enough anyway. Maybe Nick wasn’t too far gone yet, and as long as there was still hope for him, Clare had to stop. This madness had to end with him. He screwed his eyes shut, pinched his nose, and pressed his lips together. It didn’t stop the laughs from trying to get out. His ears popped as the pressure built, but in the background beat the steady drum of his heart. It was fast—too fast from hysteria and breathlessness—but it was there, pulling him down and back to himself.

Slowly Clare peeled the hand from his mouth. “So many drinks, Nick.” Another laugh threatened to escape, but Clare swallowed and forced it down. “I’m gonna need so many drinks.”

A clink of glass came from the kitchen and Clare looked up to take the bottle Nick held his way. He popped the cap with a claw and leaned back to take a long swig.

“You’re not going to make a habit of this, are you?” Nick asked. He dropped down on the couch with his own bottle and nudged Clare’s shoulder. “It doesn’t suit you, getting blackout drunk. You almost broke your nose last night before your pal caught you. He seems friendly enough, but I can’t say I’m broken up you’re not dating. He kept giving me these looks, like he was keeping an eye on me. Ha! As if I’d do anything.”

“Wait, who?” Clare asked. His pal? Last night had been a blur even before Clare’s day had driven any thought of it from his mind, but surely not. . .

“Some kind of fish demon I think? Lots of eyes,” Nick said, and that made infinitely more sense.

“Oh. Arjun. He is. A friend, I mean.”

Nick clicked his tongue. “Right, well you’d better make sure _he_ knows you’re friends. I’ve seen that look before, and you don’t need that kind of jealousy in your life. And fuck if I need it in mine. The last thing I want is some lunatic killing me for the high crime of being your roommate.”

“What are you. . . ? He’s not like that.”

“Look,” Nick sighed. “I get it. Not everyone down here’s a complete bastard. Maybe he’s like you, just a good guy who fucked up, but hear me out for a minute. I’m not going to get into how, but I can spot ‘possessive asshole’ at twenty yards, and the first sign is when they hate your friends for no good reason.”

“That’s not what I meant. What made you. . . ?”

‘What made you think we were dating?’ Clare had wanted to ask, but a different answer came to him like lightning. Arjun knew. That was why he’d been glaring at Nick. He knew because Clare had whispered in his ear that Nick was a killer, along with who knew what else. The hours after were an utter blank, and Clare hadn’t even managed to drag himself home as he’d thought.

“Never mind,” Clare said before Nick could get suspicious. Arjun wouldn’t tell anyone, if only for Clare’s sake. Nothing would come of it. Nick didn’t have to know. He didn’t have to worry in vain or regret telling Clare as much as he had, not if Clare could spare him the trouble. He didn’t have to hear about the dagger either, nor Alastor’s plans for Clare, and certainly not Clare’s own worries. Nick had enough on his plate already.

Instead Clare tipped back the bottle and took slow sips until even upending it over his head wouldn’t give him any more beer. After a few shakes to confirm it was empty, he let the bottle fall into his lap. Such a shame he couldn’t get up to grab another. One false move and Nick might see the dagger through the wrinkles of his shirt. Nick wasn’t the only one who deserved a peaceful home—a place to come back to and leave his worries at the door. He could keep his debates and campaigning out on the street, and Clare would keep his meeting with Alastor to himself. They’d both be better off for it.

And so Clare waited. His head fell back onto the cushions, eyes still closed, and for once the radio wasn’t filling the room with background noise. Had Nick turned it off after Clare walked in? How considerate, and all the more reason to be considerate in return. Stay silent. Keep the peace.

Clare’s lips curled into a thin smile. It was so easy, like passing a baton. One good turn to repay another. It could still work, even in Hell. All it took was a bit of goodwill and enough grace to return a favor not with spite but with kindness, rare as it was.

“What do you think, Nick?” Clare asked eventually. “When God looks down here, do you think He’s crying or laughing?” Nick didn’t answer, so Clare went on. “Sometimes, with some people, you have to wonder. What if they were just a step away from the other place? Maybe with the right people around them, they’d get dragged up instead of down.”

“Clare, I don’t—”

“But He’s right. He’s always right. So do you think He’s crying when someone so close slips further away, or do you think He’s laughing? Laughing since we all belong here in the end. We all deserve each other.”

A minute passed in silence. “I don’t remember you being such a depressing drunk,” Nick said, and the couch creaked as he pushed himself to his feet.

“That’s because I’m not drunk.”

“Well whatever you are, go sleep it off.” Clare cracked an eye open, and Nick was looking down at him, sympathetic despite the irritation in his voice. “I mean it, Clare. Take a nap. Between last night and whatever happened today, you look half-dead already.”

Half-dead, huh. Clare huffed out a humorless laugh, but this time it got away before any more could join it. “If you say so,” he mumbled and pushed himself up, carefully keeping his back out of view. The yawn he forced as he waved and walked backward to his room turned into a real one, and maybe he did need a rest.

There was no rush. Alastor wouldn’t be waiting next Tuesday for an update on Clare’s body count. He wouldn’t be there at all. It should have been a relief, and Clare forced himself to crack a smile. It didn’t help.

But he was right. There was no need to decide yet and no one to kill regardless. Clare unhooked the dagger from his belt and held it in his hands. Sheathed like this, it looked no different from the prop he’d been using for months in the play. A tad heavier, the sheath hard leather instead of painted wood. He pulled on the hilt, slid it out an inch, and immediately shoved it back in. Heavier for sure, and not just literally. Sharper, colder, and gleaming inwardly with the bitter light of Heaven. Clare stowed it where it belonged, in the back of his drawer beneath his old undershirts, and fell face-down on his bed.

Somehow nothing changed even with the dagger hidden away. It was still his, and he still had a choice to make. Or, depending on what he picked, an infinite set of choices. A no would only be a no in the moment. As long as the dagger was his, he’d have to keep asking himself. No matter what he decided now, one day he might say yes.

And would that be so wrong?

* * *

Clare’s eyes flew open to darkness and the sound of shattering glass. He scrambled off the bed and barely caught himself when he found the edge closer than normal. His dagger swung against his hip, and he drew it as he burst into the living room.

“Who’s there?” he called, but it was only Nick, fists clenched, breathing heavy, and teeth bared in outrage. A dark stain painted the wall by the radio, and shards of glass glinted on the floor below.

For a moment Nick turned to Clare, and in his eyes gleamed fire. Not the usual glow of passion but a deadly inferno that had Clare taking a step back. Then it passed as Nick turned and stormed into his room. The door was open behind him, and from inside came a thump and the slam of drawers.

“Those useless, good-for-nothing cretins! Goddamn fucking worthless imbeciles who can’t even— I told them! I gave them step-by-step fucking instructions, and they still couldn’t—” He finished with a yell and a thud that sounded like kicked furniture. Clare couldn’t tell as he struggled to listen to both him and the radio. Neither had any hints. Alastor half-sang the broadcast, as cheerful as ever, but he had only the usual news of distant rebellions being pushed back by fed up overlords.

“What happened?” Clare was forced to ask as Nick stomped out of the room, muttering incoherently under his breath. His suitcase dragged behind him, hastily packed and trailing a sleeve.

“She’s alive,” Nick snapped, and there was only one demon he could mean. “That’s what happened. She’s fucking alive, and I’m off to go salvage this bullshit.”

“But you said the leaders had to stay here. You voted.”

“And guess who voted against it?” he snarled, throwing the suitcase down to pull on his coat. “Cowards. They set themselves up to fail, and now they want an excuse to save their skins. They’ll fucking thank me later.”

Clare’s voice was quiet. “You’re going to kill her? For good this time?”

Nick looked back, but he wouldn’t find a hint of judgment on Clare’s face. What right did Clare have to judge with the celestial steel hidden in his drawer? For a moment his eyes flicked toward his room. He could bring it out now and hand it to Nick—not to use, perhaps, but for him to put in better hands than Clare’s.

But just as quickly, Clare brushed the thought aside. It’d take more explaining than he was ready for, and the dagger was Alastor’s gift—a horrible gift from a horrible person and all the more genuine for it. The moment passed, and Nick shook his head as he turned to open the door. “Who knows? But I’ve got one last plan I’ve been saving, and it’s high time I put it in motion.”

With a flare of his coat, he was gone, and the door slammed shut behind him.

* * *

The radio died a few minutes after Nick left, while Clare swept broken glass into a dustpan. He’d tried to wipe the beer off first, but either he’d been too late or the poor thing had chosen today to finally give out. A thump on the side wasn’t enough to revive it, but when Clare took a screwdriver to the back as Nick once had, all that met him was an enigma of bits, bobs, and coils.

The repair shop wasn’t any help either. “Fifteen bucks,” the tech quoted the next day, almost the price of a new set, and Clare packed up and went on his way. Better to get one used at a pawn shop than risk some hack job of a repair coming undone. Better yet, maybe, to wait for Nick to come home and work his magic, or wait even longer and splurge on a new model when Clare’s job officially started. He’d have to stop by the station someday and ask if Quince knew where he might get one on the cheap.

But for now, he had no time, not even to carry the radio back home before his lesson. Clare pushed the front door of the Goose and Hatchet open with his hip, then let out a breath as he dropped the box on a table.

“What have you got there?”

“Busted receiver,” Clare said, wiping sweat from his brow. Edric’s expression didn’t shift a millimeter, and Clare knew that look well from his days in the circus. It was the blank stare of an ancient demon who didn’t know what they were hearing and didn’t care, not unless the speaker got to the point. “The plan was to drop it off at the repair shop on the way, but an arm and a leg would be cheaper. You don’t mind if I, uh, put it in a corner or something? Sir?”

But instead of disapproval, an indulgent smile spread across Edric’s face. “Leave it. You’ll be done before evening, and you’ll regret bringing it long before then.” Ominous as it was, Clare couldn’t help but smile back—a small, uncertain thing, more new-formed habit than intentional. It didn’t slip as Edric gestured for him to take a sword and jump down into the pit, but it faltered when Edric didn’t join him.

“Weren’t you going to teach me, sir?” he said, and Clare should’ve known by now never to trust a smile—to trust it far less than anything else he might be given—but somehow it still caught him off guard.

“Teach you? Certainly not. You agreed to be trained, not taught, and as you already understand the importance of forms, I daresay you won’t take issue with spending your first day wearing them into your bones?”

“But—”

“Raise your sword,” Edric snapped, and Clare blinked and lifted his arms. “Higher. Over your head. Now swing.” Clare brought the sword down, and finally the smile slipped from Edric’s face as he tutted and shook his head. “No, no. Hold your wrist steady. Keep twisting it, and you’ll only slap them with the flat.”

It was easier said than done. The sword was heavier than his dagger, and the grip was harder on his forearms. Alastor had shown him how to hold a knife the first time they’d met, and Clare had been right. He’d be lucky to ever forget. Alastor had taught how to keep his hand steady at the moment of impact but fluid right up until then, ready to take any opening to draw blood.

“Won’t that still count?” Clare asked. The challenges were supposed to be scored by touches, but Edric gave him an affronted glare and hopped into the pit.

“Ridiculous. A firm grip is the first step to learning the sword.” He went on, but his voice turned to noise over the rushing in Clare’s ears. His hands curled around Clare’s to adjust his grip, and in a blink, Edric was gone. In his place was a myriad of watering eyes, all focused on Clare. “What’s this now? It’s too late to be bullheaded. Ease your grip so I. . .” The words were lost behind a static-laced whisper.

‘ _I’m not here to teach you to_ almost _kill a demon. I’m here to show you how.’_

It wasn’t dull steel in Clare’s grip, but cold silver. It wasn’t Arjun’s chest it pierced but a demon’s just like him, one who’d managed to find his way to Clare’s bad side. It could happen to anyone. They were all in Hell for a reason. They deserved each other, deserved to be dragged down.

It wasn’t Alastor’s hands twisting Clare’s knife but the weight of the life he’d taken. The pull of vacant flesh—soul not just gone but lost forever, destroyed or scattered to the ether—lifeless and glass-eyed and tugging at Clare to carry him with it. Dragging him down until he let go.

The dagger hit the stage with a clatter, and the sword hit with a hiss of shifting sand. Beyond it were Edric’s boots, several feet back after he’d jumped to avoid it. Clare followed them up to Edric’s face and flinched. The set of his brows, the wrinkle of his nose, and the grit of his teeth all painted a picture of absolute fury.

“Pick it up.” Despite his anger, Edric’s voice rang cold and sharp as steel. Sharp as the sword at Clare’s feet, and Clare blinked at the realization that his hand was out and holding empty air. “Pick it up!” he demanded, and Clare leaned down to take the sword. The vision had gone, even if his hand still shook is it wrapped around the hilt. It wouldn’t hurt to hold it at his side, relaxed, pointed down, away from anything and anyone.

“A warrior’s sword is his life,” Edric went on. “No matter how weary his arm or his soul, he does not let go of his blade unless he means to draw another, he means to sheathe it, or he means to die. Do I make myself clear?”

“Ye—” The breath caught in Clare’s throat, and he swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Edric nodded, and in a breath the anger flooded out of him. His shoulders relaxed and he took a seat at the edge of the pit. “Good. Then there may be hope for you yet!”

“Hope for—?”

“Ah! Don’t forget you’re the one paying for these lessons. There’ll be time for that later. Now raise your sword. No, not so high this time.” Clare lowered the sword from over his head to in front of his chest. For a few seconds the tip wobbled, then stilled as nothing happened and Clare caught his breath. “Now look here,” Edric said. “This is how you hold a sword.”

He made no attempt to reach out. No more hands pulling at Clare’s, only verbal corrections as the knight demonstrated where Clare’s arms needed to go. The moment he was satisfied, it was back to the same as before with Clare raising his arms above his head and swinging down.

“Better,” Edric said, then walked to the bar to pour himself a glass.

“How many—times should I—?” Clare tried to get the question out between swings, but Edric cut him off with a laugh.

“Enough that you can do it in your sleep!” he said, then quieter, “Enough that you’ll keep swinging no matter what you see in front of you.”

Clare nodded. No matter what distraction or hallucination appeared in front of him. It took a few more swings until he understood the real meaning. No matter who his enemy was.

“Hope for me—to what?” he finally asked as Edric sat back down at the edge of the pit and sipped at his drink.

“Why, to have some semblance of honor,” Edric answered. “I’d thought at first I had chosen wrong. Would a disciple of the Radio Demon be as blind as the man himself to the dignity of a warrior? Would you too abandon your arms for magics and your principles for a jest? But now I see. You’re merely a young, bright squire given to an odious failure of a knight, but it’s not too late for you to turn down the right path.”

Given to Alastor? The word was bitter, as if Clare had no choice in the matter. He kept himself from frowning, but he couldn’t keep the venom out of his strike. If Edric noticed—if he knew the reason the sword swung faster and harder than any time before—he gave no sign.

“Every warrior has a weight on their heart,” he went on, “and a true warrior takes pride in that fact. A true warrior has the strength to bear any weight he accrues in service of his duty and his honor. A weak man may collapse under it, even if he was just. A dishonorable man may struggle to bear a weight earned pursuing ill ends, but it is only monsters like the Radio Demon that feel nothing at all. Be grateful you are not like him.”

Clare nodded along, even if the last words rang hollow. No one could say them honestly who had met Alastor. Even if everything leading up to them was true—and no one, least of all Clare, would deny for a moment that Alastor was a monster—there’d be few who would refuse his place if they had the choice. To have all his power and the freedom to use it without heed of conscience. . .it was no wonder he never stopped smiling. Clare had considered it once, holding up his hand to the light and extending his claws, a clean, pale ivory to Alastor’s blood red.

But he’d set it aside as an impossible daydream. There was a reason Alastor was the first human to not only stand toe-to-toe with Hell’s overlords but knock a few of them down a peg. He belonged here, well and truly. More than anyone Clare had ever met, he was one to drag people down with him. Like a current pulling hapless swimmers deep below the surface. Like a star that burned black.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Clare lowered his sword, caught his breath, and waited for the inevitable question. “Why have you stopped?” Edric said, and Clare pointed to his throat.

“Water, sir.” Clare’s voice cracked as if on cue. “I already had to carry the radio all the way here.”

Edric scoffed but got to his feet. “Very well. Take a break if you must. I’ll get you your water.”

“Thank you, sir.” Clare sat at the edge of the pit, and as Edric left to pour water from the sink, he considered the next step of his plan. A minute later, Edric returned with a pitcher and a glass, and Clare gathered his thoughts. He took a sip, breathed in deep, and cleared his throat. “Sir. Can I ask you a question?”

“That depends. What about?”

“Demonology.”

“Hah!” Edric scoffed, but today it sounded more amused than dismissive. A good sign. “This again? You’d do better to focus on your training than idle fancies.” Perfect. Edric even connected the thoughts himself. All Clare had to do now was bring the conversation back around. Make it a loop.

“I am focused, but how long am I going to be practicing swings?”

“I told you. Until every one of them comes as easy as breathing.”

“And if I practice at home? Show me the rest of the forms, and I’ll have them memorized by Friday.”

Clare kept his brows set and his gaze steady as Edric stared. He couldn’t back down at the crucial moment, even if he knew it was impossible. Two days wouldn’t be enough—not for him, not even with whatever blessing let him move quicker than he ever had in life—but any trace of doubt could shatter his hasty plan. He trained his eyes on Edric’s, wide with the same carefree confidence he’d so often seen in Alastor’s, and the look on Edric’s face was familiar too. The same fascinated grin, torn between wanting to laugh as Clare ate his words and curiosity at whether he might actually succeed.

“Ha!” he laughed. “I’d pay to see that!”

“Then it’s a challenge! For every touch I get on you, sir, you answer one question.”

“On me?” Edric pulled back, though Clare couldn’t tell if he was surprised or affronted. Whichever it was, his grin only widened as he straightened his back. “As you wish, challenge accepted! But what do I get in return for humoring you?”

Clare’s hands tightened on the edge of the floorboards. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. His mouth opened, but no words came out, not until habit forced him to say something to break the silence. “I—”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Edric interrupted. “You chose your reward, so I think I deserve to choose my own too.” He pointed past Clare, over to the edge of the pit where the rack of swords stood. “Those need to be cleaned and polished before the weekend. Any squire worth his salt must learn proper care for his knight’s arms.”

‘Before the weekend,’ he’d said, so it couldn’t take too long, only Friday evening at most. Clare knew the steps too, even if he’d never done them himself. The crew had been forced to learn once the musical switched over to real weapons, and they’d complained about it almost more than the violence. A coat of polish and a layer of oil, but at least it took less scrubbing than the bloodstains.

Still, cleaning all twenty-odd swords would take time, even if Clare wasn’t alone. If it had to be done by the weekend, Edric wouldn’t leave it up to a bet and a novice squire. He had employees for that, people to snap at Clare if he made a mistake and make sure the work got done if he lagged behind.

Clare took a deep breath and smiled. “But only if you completely shut me out.”

Edric nodded. “Only if you score no hits on me whatsoever, yes, but you underestimate me. The odds remain in my favor.”

“Then why not make things more interesting, sir? Let me borrow this, just until Friday” He held the sword forward, his grip just as Edric had shown him, and Clare could see the gears turning in Edric’s head. How much was it worth to him? What were the odds of Clare damaging the blade or running off with it, never to be seen again?

Eventually Edric let out a breath and nodded. “On one condition. That box of yours remains here as collateral.”

It took Clare a moment to realize what he meant. “The radio? But it’s broken.”

“And yet it still holds some value to you, else you would have thrown it away.”

It was true enough. He could have left it at the repair shop and made it their problem, if not for the radio being technically Nick’s. Yet another reason not to pay for the repair, Clare thought, and a very good one to make sure he brought the sword back unharmed. A broken radio wouldn’t be any good to Clare in the next few days, and Nick wouldn’t be around in time to miss it. There was no reason to say no.

“Then it’s a deal, sir,” he said and held out his hand.

After the shake, it was back to stances and forms. Edric demonstrated another set, then made corrections so Clare wouldn’t be drilling his own mistakes. Not that Edric expected it to work.

“Foolishness. Utter foolishness,” he muttered. “You’ll be spending all of Friday unlearning everything you’ve done.” He said it with a smile on his face, though, and finished with, “But you’re no coward. I’ll give you that.”

And it was Clare who got the last laugh as evening arrived and the staff clocked in to set up the bar. One of them yelled over, “Hey sir, what am I supposed to do with this thing?” while wiping down tables, and Edric sighed and pointed toward storage. Clare would regret bringing the radio, Edric had said, and now Clare knew why. He could feel it in the burning from his fingertips all the way to the base of his ribcage. If he’d had to carry the thing back, he’d be begging his arms to fall off just to spare him the pain. Instead, all he had to do when the lesson ended and customers began to trickle in was take the scabbard Edric offered and hook it to his belt.

It was only as he passed by the radio station on his way home that Clare stopped, ignored the ache, and pressed a hand to his face. Hopefully this wouldn’t become a habit, but lately he’d been finding himself bringing home more and more weapons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Alastor comic dropped and my first reaction was, _"Phew!_ I don't have to do a complete rewrite!" And with that creeping dread out of the way, I'm starting to realize just how well some of it fits with what I'm planning later. This is going to be fun!
> 
> Also in case it isn't obvious, _please_ think twice (and then a few times more for good measure) before taking life advice from anyone in this story! Or from anything I write really, since wow is it terrible! These people are all kinds of messed up in the head.
> 
> Thank you to JustASandwich for convincing me to put this in a series with Afterlight. Sorry I couldn't go with your name suggestion, but I decided to opt for poetic instead of honest!


	8. Magic and Power

The first problem was the floor. Hard dirt lay under the coat of sand, but it still shifted enough to throw Clare off. It was nothing like he was used to. Not the creaking floorboards of his apartment, not the solid planks of the theater, and not the worlds Alastor created. Those rooms echoed with perfect sound—the  _ clop _ of heels on resonant hardwood, the high  _ tap _ of rubber on cold stone tile—notes and tones so exceedingly true to life Clare couldn’t begin to deny them. It was sound that held the illusion together. Lights, color, and soundscapes clear and pristine as glass and clashing steel. No secrets there. Just keep your eyes open.

But this sand was a different kind of real, worse than even the plywood circus stages. It was the dull, dragging reality of heavy limbs and shifting footing and muted sound, and somehow it was fitting. Edric didn’t fight with flourishes or grand gestures worked in where he could get away with them. His wasn’t a love of art turned to killing. It was generations of killing refined to an art form, and every step was one he calculated to impress that on Clare.

Almost worse was the audience cheering him on. The Goose and Hatchet opened earlier on Fridays, and already regulars were drifting in. A pair sat at the bar and talked between themselves. Another drifted off into a corner, but the rest gathered around as if they meant to distract Clare. Normally he’d tune them out, but it was hard when they were right. They were right to bet against him, criticize his form, and roar when Edric got a particularly quick strike in. They didn’t cheer for every touch. They’d never stop if they did.

Shoulder, chest, neck, thigh. Edric’s sword was everywhere, right next to Clare’s when he needed to block and right where Clare’s wasn’t every time he stepped in to land a scratch. Never more and often less—a gentle kiss of cold steel to prove Clare would be dead without the skill and grace Edric took to stay his blade.

Clare couldn’t blame the crowd for laughing, but he shut everyone up when he got his first touch in.

The floor was different, and the difference was worse after a full day of practicing at home, but it wasn’t Clare’s first time standing there. It took a conscious effort at first to lift his feet higher and plant them more firmly, but even as his attention slipped, his footing didn’t. His focus turned to the sound, to the wrong- and rightness of it. Not a show but still a display. Not a dance but still a weave of patterns and motion, and Clare had spent the last day memorizing the steps.

Even so, the touch was an impulsive, suicidal move. Edric’s sword tapped against Clare’s stomach, the two stepped apart to reset, and Clare swung out again. Edric blocked effortlessly, but Clare didn’t pull back to a neutral stance. Edric would be ready. He’d use the opportunity to retake the offensive as he had dozens of times before.

Instead Clare leaned forward, wrenching his sword back on course and thrusting it out like a fencer’s. Edric dodged, but his sidestep was a fraction too slow. The tip split the cloth of his tunic and skidded off a hard plate beneath. Exoskeleton. In the instant it took for Clare to realize he’d done no damage—even without the armor the scratch would have been superficial—Edric’s sword pressed against his arm. Clare hissed as it cut in above his elbow.

For seconds it was the only sound in the room. Clare’s hiss and the hiss of sand as he and Edric stepped apart. A hush fell on the crowd. Even the couple at the bar joined in, turning their heads to see what happened.

That was when the booing started. It rose somewhere in the back and spread until Edric raised a hand for silence.

“How much did you lose, Dreyfus?”

“Ten bucks,” spat a wolf-headed demon.

“Ha! Did you forget? I don’t waste my efforts on the hopeless. You’d best pay up, but come back next month if you think you deserve your coin back. This one’s one of our new hires.” He cast his gaze over the crowd. “The same goes for the rest of you. Keep jeering if you think Caeden Clare won’t remember your faces.”

It’d be easy enough. Most demons were unique enough to be unmistakable. Clare made a show of scanning the crowd, but his eyes slid between faces without memorizing one. The jeers didn’t matter, not when adrenaline and the thrill of a desperate plan gone right threatened to hammer his heart straight up into his throat. It didn’t help when Edric clapped a hand down on his shoulder almost hard enough to stop Clare from jumping.

“And as for you. . .” He waited until Clare looked up at him. “In a real fight, that would have cost you your arm.” His brows furrowed into what might have been a stern line if not for the smile tugging at his lips.

Clare grinned up at him. “I know,” he said, and the two stepped apart and raised their swords. The fight went on, still as one-sided as before.

Clare’s second touch came moments before the end of the ten-minute timer. His sword swung low, then lower in the split-second after Edric blocked. The edge tapped against Edric’s boot with barely enough force to scratch the leather, but this time Clare skipped back before Edric could retaliate. It was another move that’d be useless on a battlefield—nothing but unnecessary risk and wasted motion—but it was enough to earn his second question.

And Clare knew exactly what to do with it. A full day spent practicing sword strikes without even the radio in the background had left him with little to do but think, but thinking was a minefield. Too many threads led back to Alastor and the broadcasts Clare was missing, to Nick and his plans, to the dagger still hidden in Clare’s dresser. Whenever his thoughts wandered, he forced them back on course, readying his questions for if—no,  _ when _ he won.

In the end, he’d narrowed it down to one plus three—the one question that started it all and three more to use as a test. Three chances to see how Edric answered and adjust on the fly. He hadn’t dared hope for more, but after all his preparation, it almost stung to get only one of them.

He’d have to make do though. The last grains of sand fell through the hourglass before Clare could find another opening. The bartender refereeing the match called time, and Edric gestured to join him in a bow. The applause was reluctant and short, but it didn't matter. Clare had his questions. He stowed the sword in the rack behind him, and when he turned around, Edric was smiling and beckoning him over to the bar.

“Now. I agreed to answer your questions, did I not?” Edric said as Clare sat. He spoke clearly, letting his voice carry to anyone nearby, no matter that Clare would’ve picked up even a whisper. A few heads turned, then looked away. A few ears perked up, and Clare understood. This too was part of the show. The crowd had broken up after the fight, but a good half of them had drifted over to the bar, and not just to order drinks.

Clare took a deep breath before asking his first. “What decides what shape we take as demons?”

He caught a few assorted chuckles but none louder than Edric’s. “Hah! A simple question. Your birth, your life, and your death.” Clare waited for him to go on, but after a few seconds, Edric raised a brow. “Your next question?”

“What? Wait! I earned more than that!” Clare said, then paused. Edric had given his answer, and anything more might have a cost attached.

But Edric dropped his shoulders and sighed as if he’d been expecting as much. “Go on,” he said, and Clare took the risk.

“What does ‘my birth’ mean? What part of my life?”

“It means  _ family, _ you dullard, and what other than your sins could matter here?” Edric rolled his eyes and waved a hand across the bar. “Add a dash of irony, and  _ et voilà. _ Ask your next question.”

Alastor wouldn’t have allowed it. Nick might have if Clare agreed to do the dishes later or some other favor, and maybe this was why Edric wasn’t a dealmaker. He’d answered three questions already, but only technically. Only in word, not in spirit. Honor demanded he give Clare a just reward, and Clare set aside all the contingencies he’d planned for his last question and asked it straight.

“Then what about magic? What decides what kind of magic a demon can use?”

“Your soul,” Edric answered. For a moment Clare thought he was being as laconic as before, but it was only a pause to gather his thoughts. “All demons heal because our souls recreate our bodies in the image the Lord gave us. Everything else is our own vision. You, Clare, are fast and light of foot because you know in your soul that is where your power lies. Because you are a cat and because you are a fighter.”

Clare blinked. Frowned. Thought back to his days in the circus. “But I was fast before I could fight,” he said.

Edric chuckled and smiled back. “Long ago, the little Lady of my Lord's castle had a kitten. He was raised on finer cuts of meat than the handmaids who fed him, delivered to him on a silver platter. The night the girl died—a case of the pox; tragic, that—the beast vanished. Nowhere to be seen. They found him in a week’s time, feasting on rats in the cellar. Imagine—a cat who’d never had to lift a claw in his life, but hunting was in his blood. The devil lost a leg a year later, and even that didn't slow him down! The castle never had a better mouser!”

Clare nodded along, looking down and biting his tongue. Was that why Edric gave him the job? A centuries-old anecdote? But maybe he had a point. If there was a trick to it, maybe demons could learn to judge by appearances. It’d be something to consider later, when he wasn’t tense in his seat, waiting for the answer to his real question.

“And what about other kinds of magic?” he said. The ones that drew on more than the user’s soul. Clare looked up. “The ones that’re more than being faster or stronger.”

“You want to know the nature of your old master’s magic. The Radio Demon’s magic.”

The hush that fell over the crowd was a subtle one. Their side conversations didn’t stop, but they skipped a beat as everyone drew a collective breath. When they went on, they were quieter, listening for the sound of the doorbell and the hiss of static. 'Speak of the devil, and he doth appear,' the old saying went. Floorboards creaked as demons shifted in place, as if Alastor’s title alone would be enough to summon him. Clare heard it all, and he understood. From the corner of his eye, he could see the sidelong glances aimed his way, looking him up and down, reappraising.

Edric's words weren't a question, and he didn’t give Clare a chance to answer. He went on, loud enough to carry to those who'd started edging away lest they hear something they shouldn't. “I’ll answer your question," he said. "That man's magic is potent, yes, but its nature is no different than ours. With his power, you might move as water or lightning, but it is not power that—”

A sharp cling rang out as the door swung open. All heads turned, but it wasn’t Alastor who strode in, or skittered more accurately. Atop the demon’s four spidery legs was a small body, and over it floated a blue flame. It froze as all eyes turned its way, but it wasn’t Alastor. The room fell silent as the bell over the door chimed and stilled, but Edric broke it clearing his throat. Slowly the murmur of background conversation built back up.

“It is not power that begets magic as you understand it,” Edric went on, “else others of his kind would have made their names long before him.” The question must have been obvious on Clare’s face. Edric let out an exasperated breath before answering. “Dealmakers. I speak of dealmakers, but none before him has ever been so bold yet so cowardly. No mortals have been so willing to barter souls in the pursuit of power yet so loath to act once they find it. I have seen generals, merchant lords, and kings desperate to acquire magics to match those demons of yore who predate us all, yet none have succeeded. Not until now, and do you know why?”

Edric’s voice was louder than ever, but as Clare shook his head no, a flicker of blue caught his eye. The same demon who’d made an inadvertent show of its entrance was weaving its way through the crowd as demons flinched away from its flames.

“Because in his life a wise mortal learns that ascension is the work of his hands. Only those most womanly lords and attendants—those who would command armies from the comfort of their war rooms, never dirtying their hands or setting foot on the battlefield—only they would believe will alone can shape the world. But their sort lacks the audacity to risk their souls. They may have the arrogance of demons born into their power, but without that power, their will is meaningless. Only your Radio Demon has ever been contrary enough to. . .excuse me!”

The fire demon had finally made it through the crowd, but it wasn’t looking at Edric. Its eyes, two white flames among the blue, were turned to Clare. Another line of white flared below them as it spoke in a crackly but decidedly male voice.

“Caeden? Caeden Clare?”

Clare nodded even as Edric’s face twisted in outrage. “And who are you to interrupt me?”

“Ash, si—” The demon started, but his flame flickered as if shaking his head. He turned back to Clare. “Ash, but really it’s Az. Short for Azure, but no one gets it right. Has anything happened to Nick?”

“Uh. He left a couple—” Clare cut himself off before he could say any more. Anyone looking for Nick had to be one of his fellow conspirators. Clare hadn’t met them, but at least a few knew where Nick lived. If Ash had been there—if he’d learned Clare’s name while tracking down Nick—he could be working for one of the other leaders, looking for proof Nick had broken their rules and a way to settle the score.

But as Clare stayed silent, Ash’s shoulders sagged in relief. “No? Then thank God, there’s still a chance. Let’s go. I’ll fill you in on the way.” He took a step toward the door and beckoned with a leg, but Clare stayed seated, looking at Edric.

“Clare. Do you know this louse?”

_ “Louse? _ I’m no—” He didn’t get a chance to finish before Clare shook his head and Edric spoke over him.

“Then would somebody get this hedgeborn out of my bar?”

“Wait!” Ash’s flame flared, and the hands reaching for him pulled back. “It’s Nick! He’s in trouble. Not dead yet, looks like, but who knows how long that’ll last.”

Clare looked at Edric again. This time his eyes were closed and his brow furrowed not in anger but resignation. “Go, then” he said. “See what he wants. If the life of a brother in arms is truly at stake, you would be remiss not to hear him out. Go and take your sword if you need, but you’d be better served wielding your own blade.”

“Thank you, sir,” Clare muttered as he slid from the barstool and followed Ash through the crowd, hesitating only a second before passing the weapon rack by. Edric was right. If this was a trap, Clare’s best chance of fighting his way out would be with his dagger. At the door, he looked back, but Edric gave him only a curt nod before turning away. The bell chimed as it swung shut behind him, then was drowned out by the roar of an engine.

“Get in,” Ash said, pointing to the still-running car double-parked on the street, and Clare stopped dead in his tracks.

“Are we. . . ?” Clare barely kept himself from asking the obvious question, ‘Are we driving?’ He’d managed to avoid it for all the years he’d been in Hell, traveling only by train or on foot. As reckless as drivers on the surface had been, they were leagues worse in Hell. Clare’s thoughts ground to a halt, and even with all the questions spinning through his head, a long, awkward silence passed before he finally managed to voice one. “Can you even drive?”

Ash was already in the car, the passenger door left open behind him. His flame floated over the steering wheel with his body angled across the bench. He gave the wheel a twist and revved the engine. “Alright, new plan.  _ Shut the fuck up _ and get in. I already wasted an hour looking for you, now get a move on before we find Nick in a gutter!”

The words were enough for Clare to take a deep breath and force himself into the street. He slid between two parked cars, looked both ways twice even though the only car he could hear was the one in front of him, then jumped in and slammed the door before he could second-guess any of it. He needn’t have bothered. The second it shut, Ash stomped on the gas and spun the wheel to the left. The car skidded across the street in a u-turn that threw Clare against the door.

“Claws off the upholstery!” Ash snapped, and only then did Clare notice the lines scored in the leather, almost deep enough to cut clean through. No matter how he glared, Clare’s claws refused to retract, and he settled for clutching the door handle and pressing his left hand in his lap. “Christ,” Ash said. “I didn’t think you were that old, but it explains you flapping your gums with Sir Lancelot back there.”

“Died in a car.” Clare’s voice came out thinner than he wanted, but it drove the point home. Ash hummed and pulled his focus back to running stop signs while Clare stared resolutely down at the dash.

“Where are we going?” he asked eventually. The turns were unfamiliar while driving, and he didn’t dare look up and check.

“Heretic’s Row. After that, who fucking knows, but first we’re stopping by your place.”

“What? Why?”

“To pick up your cache. Our sort always has one. The knife under your pillow, the gun in your drawer—anything. Hell, I can barely hold the sucker, but I still keep my rifle under the bed. Unless you’re telling me that pig sticker’s all you’ve got.”

Clare followed the pincer pointed toward his dagger, then went back to staring at his knees without a word. He only realized a minute later, when the car screeched to a stop, that his silence was as good as admission.

At least he could finally look up without knowing he’d freeze. Ash was staring at him, his expression flickering and unreadable. “Well? What’re you waiting for?” he asked.

“You haven’t told me anything.”

The flickers of Ash’s eyes rolled up to the sky. “What's there to say? Our base got raided. Nick didn’t make it out. Since he’s not dead yet, he’s probably getting tortured. He said to tell you if anything happened to him, so I figured you were gonna help, but fuck it! We’ll just sit here until he bites it and pawn his shit off, huh? I thought maybe you were less of a bastard than most folk around here, but—”

“Yeah? And what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not—” Clare barely caught himself in time. He looked around and went on, lower. “I’m not a communist, and I’m not joining your militia.”

“Neither am I, and I’m not goddamn recruiting you!” Sparks flew as Ash took a deep breath. “Look, how about this? You go and grab whatever you need for an op. It’s a long drive back. I’ll tell you the rest on the way, and anytime you want, you just say the word. I’ll turn around and drive you straight here, swear on my life.”

Clare thought for a moment. “Fine,” he said, then stepped out of the car. The feel of stable ground beneath his feet was comforting, reassuring enough that Clare managed not to drop his keys as he fumbled them out of his pocket and opened the front door.

He dropped them anyway as a voice called out from behind him. “Oh, Clare!” it said, then slipped into a clicking laugh as he dropped into a crouch. “Easy, there,” Jan said and waved a feather duster from her perch on the ceiling. “A young man came by looking for you. Did he find you at the station? I told him you’d be there, but you really should stay away, dear. His Lordship might act like a right gentleman, but—”

“Can’t talk now, Jan,” Clare said as he sighed and picked up his keys. He waved back and rushed toward the stairs, taking them three at a time. He was halfway up the third flight before her words sank in.

So that was how Ash found him. He must have known where Nick lived, then had Jan point him to the station and Quince to the bar, but it still left questions. So many questions about Ash and Nick and Clare’s part in all this. Questions Clare didn’t get any closer to solving as he opened his dresser, pushed his clothes aside, and fixed his eyes on Alastor’s dagger. It wasn’t an answer. Nick couldn’t have known about it. It wouldn’t be part of his plans or Ash’s, but it was an option, and options were Clare’s best chance while he was so far out of the loop.

But the sheath was cold where he touched it. It was only the usual chill of unattended leather, but it was a taste of what lay below—that frigid wrongness threatening to suck the afterlife out of anything it touched. It was viscerally sickening, nauseating, and Clare jerked his hand away and stumbled back. His shins hit the edge of the bed, and he dropped down to sitting and lay his head in his hands.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t murder someone, not like this. It was one thing to get rid of someone truly evil—someone who’d go out of their way to harm innocents—and even then it wasn’t so simple. This time it was Alastor’s face flashing behind his eyes at the thought. Clare could almost hear that static-laced voice in his ear, feel the hands guiding his inexorably forward. Alastor would hurt anyone on a whim, guilty or innocent, whenever and wherever it pleased him. By any reckoning, he deserved to be punished. Maybe he deserved to die, but Clare couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t a question of means or opportunity. Even if Clare had those—even if he managed to slip through the station’s magic and catch Alastor sleeping—Clare still couldn’t do it. His hands were pressed too tightly over his eyes to shake, but Clare grimaced, his throat tightening as if he’d bitten into rotten fruit.

Hell would be a colder, quieter place with Alastor gone. Someone else would take over his station, but they’d do it with an eye for profit, not a genuine, soul-deep love of the art. If Edric was right, Alastor’s control over radio could only come from utter certainty that he was meant to be heard. He was meant to break silences. To be the voice people tuned in to as they read the evening paper. The one who chased stillness out of empty rooms.

His voice had been Clare’s companion before, but it was gone now. No radio, no Nick, and Clare’s home was emptier than ever. In the background he could pick up the imperfect silence of his apartment building—the thumps from upstairs, the rush of plumbing in the walls, the murmur of voices from across the hall—but all of it was muffled by distance. The sounds of life were everywhere, but they weren’t his. His home was cold, quiet, and if he didn’t move, the warmth Nick took with him when he left would be gone forever. His ghost would follow Clare on a thread of guilt, filling every corner with the silence of the grave.

It was dread that pushed Clare forward, desperation that forced his hand to curl around the dagger and pull it from its drawer. He had to take it. It could be the difference between life and death, but not for his enemies. He wouldn’t have to kill anyone, not unless they were asking to die. He could hold the blade out and drop into a stance, and any self-respecting demon would turn tail and run. The farce wouldn’t matter if no one called him on it.

Besides, he had the perfect excuse—except it wasn’t an  _ excuse,  _ only another reason. He couldn’t go back empty-handed after making it obvious he had a trump card, and he had to go back. After all the time Ash took to find him, Clare had to at least hear him out. For his sake. For Nick’s.

In the end, it all came down to one simple truth. Nick was in trouble, and Clare could help. Even if they were in Hell and even if everything came with a price. If anything, that was all the more reason to go. Nick hadn’t saved Clare’s life back in the circus, but he’d given him a new lease on it and a push to do the unthinkable. If not for Nick, Clare would have avoided Alastor’s territory like the plague and missed so much for it. A world of opportunity, a chance to be on stage, new friends, new acquaintances, and whatever Alastor was. A home and all that came with it. Evenings spent sitting on the couch, drinking beer, shooting the breeze, and listening to the radio.

It’d been dangerous. It was a risk, but in every risk was an opportunity. Clare had known it before. Back on the surface he’d learned to steady his hands and reach quick and unflinching into pockets and purses. It’d been worth it to see Jule grow up without worrying if there’d be food on the table, even as the stock market crashed and so many others went without.

Then he’d died, and there was no point anymore. He’d been lost when he fell, drifting bitter and resigned into Azarrien’s circus, and he wasn’t alone. It was Nick who was the odd man out, Nick who’d dreamed and plotted and hoped, and Nick who’d saved them both.

And he hadn’t stopped there. It was Nick who could save more than the two of them if Clare could pay him back. He’d be the heart of a web of favors for favors, good turns for good turns. He’d use Hell’s own rules against it to lift himself up and drag his comrades with him, with Clare as the first link in the chain.

Clare’s stride was steadier as he crossed back through the lobby and waved up to Jan. “Don’t die before you pay your gas bill,” she chittered, and Clare smiled and walked out the door. His grin stiffened at the thought of climbing back into the car, but it was the smallest of the risks he was taking, and the opportunity was clear. He clenched his hands around the sheath and forced himself to sit, but this time he kept his head up and watched buildings and cars fly away as Ash stepped on the gas.

Ash didn’t so much as touch the brakes until miles later when a busy intersection forced them to stop. Only then did he turn to see what Clare had brought. His flame flicked with irritation. “Seriously? That’s it? I know you were the quiet type, but what good’s another knife going to do?”

With the car at a standstill, Clare managed to take a breath and move a hand to the hilt. No sense hesitating. If he was going to make an act of being confident, he’d better start now. In one fluid move, he drew the blade and was immediately grateful they were stuck in traffic. The wheel jerked as Ash flinched away.

“Jesus fuck! Put that thing away before there’s an accident!” As if he hadn’t nearly caused one himself. Still, Clare didn’t have to be told twice. The moment the celestial steel was covered, it felt like he’d put away a block of ice. The tension thawed, and the chill raising the hairs on Clare’s arms vanished as if it was never there. Ash leaned back in his seat and breathed in deep, his eyes narrowed to closed lines. He startled when a car honked behind them and made his turn, this time at a reasonable speed. “Alright,” he said. “I get it. You know what you’re doing. Just don’t erase any of our guys, yeah?”

With any luck, Clare wouldn’t have to erase anyone, but something in Ash’s voice gave Clare pause. A trace of an earnest request. “Of course not. Why would I erase. . . ? They’re not going to try to fight me, are they?”

Ash sighed. “Nick really didn’t tell you anything, did he? Ever heard of Fleur?”

“What’s Fleur?”

“Not what.  _ Who. _ Fleurenine. Former ex-Overlord of Heretic’s Row. The bitch we thought we killed last Cleanse, but turns out she was just the normal sort of dead, and now she’s raising hell.”

Oh. “I did hear about her. On the radio.” For only a minute or two before it died, admittedly. Most of what Clare knew was still what Nick told him.

“Then you know about her mind control?”

No, but Clare could draw his own conclusions. If her guards and servants were being controlled, not only would they be innocent, they’d likely be Nick’s allies. It was two more reasons not to erase them, on top of hating the thought of it in the first place. The dagger was only an option. A contingency, only here because he’d been careless and cornered himself earlier with his silence.

“Is that how she kidnapped Nick?” Clare asked.

“I’ll take that as a no," Ash said. "Anyone she uses it on goes blank. All they do is follow orders until they die. Can’t talk except to repeat what they've been told, can't answer questions, can’t make deals, and that’s what she wants him for. He won’t give up though. Can’t, really. And she’s not gonna wait forever. That’s why we’ve got to get him out.”

“How? Won’t she control us too?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Here, look in the glove box.” Ash reached a leg over to unhook it, and Clare felt between papers, boxes, and wrappers until his hand settled on something hard and cold. He leaned back, drawing out a gun by its barrel. “She can't use her magic unless she’s looking at you. A nine mil won't put her down for long, and that’s  _ if _ you see her first and  _ if  _ you get her in the head, but it’s a damn sight better than. . .” Ash glanced over, trailed off, and shook his head. “Fucking hell. Haven’t you ever heard of trigger safety?”

His tone was condescending, but Clare answered honestly. “No?”

“Then give me that!” Clare held the gun out, expecting Ash to snatch it away, but Ash lifted it slowly and gently out of Clare’s hand. He slid it with equal care into the door pocket. “Jeez. The fuck kind of assassin were you?”

“The. . .what?”

“Oh, my bad,  _ enforcer. _ That’s what they called you, isn’t it? Guess it would be easier to clean up than a gunshot, and it explains the. . .everything.” He waved a leg, gesturing up and down at Clare. “It’s always the real crazies that seem normal ‘til they're laughing over your corpse.”

Another block flew by before Clare could find his voice again.

_ “What?” _

Ash flickered with exasperation. “There’s no point being coy about it. I heard what you did in New York, with the. . .” He turned to shoot a glare but found only utter confusion. “With the mafia,” he finished, then swore under his breath. “Fuck. He was bullshitting all along, huh.”

“Who was?”

“Who’d you think?” Ash snapped, and there was only one possibility. Only one man who knew both Clare and Ash and could tell one about the other. “So now what?” Ash said. “Want me to turn around?”

Clare said nothing, and they drove on in silence. Clare didn’t know how long it was before he answered, but it was enough time to let his heartbeat slow as much as it would in a car, unclench his hands, and set them calmly on his lap.

“Nick’s going to die without us, you said.”

“It’s that or die with us. Great pair of fucking heroes we’d make, huh? A sniper who can’t snipe and a civvie with a magic kitchen knife.”

“You’re not turning around.”

“I told you. I won’t unless you give the word.”

He hadn’t slowed down though, and Clare braced himself and looked out the window. They’d be leaving Pentagram City soon. The houses lining the road were the suburban, single-family sort that ringed any city’s outskirts. There were fewer of them than above in the human cities. Families didn’t tend to stick together after falling, and few sinners managed to live and put up with each other long enough to buy a house.

And who could blame them? Everyone here was a sinner. They’d all fuck up eventually. It was in their nature. Even Nick, who’d gone so far out of his way to do some good in their world, couldn’t help but fall back into old habits.

But it didn’t matter, not anymore. Maybe Ash wouldn’t have bothered looking for Clare if he’d known the truth, but there was no changing it now. No changing either that Clare couldn’t back out. One lie wasn’t enough to forget everything Nick had done.

“If we can’t kill Fleurenine before she sees us, and we can’t kill her people because they're yours, then what’s your plan? Sneak in and break him out?”

“Oh, you can kill them all you want, as long as it's not for good. It’s the only way to break her spell anyway. But sneaking in's still the best case, yeah.”

Clare took a deep breath. “I can do that.” He’d learned long ago how to get lost in a crowd and move without drawing attention, how to know if he was being watched and predict the exact moment they’d look away. It wasn’t the same as going unseen, but his new hearing would help. It’d make sure he never ran into someone unawares.

“You know what you’re saying, right? If you get caught, you’ll be dead or worse. I won’t hold it against you if you back out, just do it now and not in an hour, alright?”

“I won’t,” Clare said. “Not until I see the place, and only if it really is impossible. Nick’s was there for me last time I got stuck in a deathtrap. I’m not done paying him back.”

Ash only shook his head. “You really aren’t, are you?” His flame swiveled, looking over at Clare, this time for more than a glance. He started at Clare’s face, holding his gaze before flicking his eyes down to the dagger in his lap. “You’re not contracted,” he said as Clare froze in his seat.

“Road! Eyes on the road!”

Ash scoffed but looked forward anyway. A slight turn of the wheel corrected their drift, but it was a while before Clare could slow his hyperventilating, retract his claws, and lean back on the bench. Ash spoke on.

“Yeah, I didn’t think you were. You don’t act like one, but Nick’s been saying the whole time that it’s all mind over matter. The way he puts it, all the miserable ones you see are only miserable ‘cause they were tricked or signed a bad deal, and now they know they’re fucked for good. And people like you get along fine since you know what you’re doing and make the most of your life or whatever.”

“Not like me,” Clare interrupted.

“Hm? Oh, fair—”

“But he’s right.” People like Quince were proof enough. A deal wasn’t the end of the world, not with the right outlook and the right concessions.

“. . . Fair enough,” Ash said. “But see, I had a hunch you weren’t one of them, and now it brings up a whole different problem. Nick said to tell you if something happened to him, so I thought that was why. Maybe you had some sort of protection clause in your contract, but you weren't exactly jumping at the bit back at that bar. So then I thought he wanted you to know for sure the guy you sold your soul to was dead.”

“But. . . But why?”

Ash tapped his pincers on the steering wheel. “That’s what I thought too! What’s the point? I figure you’d be the first to know if your soul came back, but I don’t know. Maybe he wanted you to know how he died? Some sort of remembrance thing? He made it out like you were chummy enough, but it doesn’t matter. If he’s alive, you can ask him yourself, and if he’s not, then that’s that. I won’t be sticking around Heretic’s Row if he’s kicked the bucket. He’s the only one who can un-fuck the mess we’ve—”

“Not that.” Clare paused, searching for the right words, for a hint to make all of this make sense. There was nothing, no reason for Ash to think what he’d said, and Clare’s question came out in confused fragments. “I didn’t mean— Why did you. . . ? Why would you think he. . .that I sold him my soul?”

“Hah. Same reason I thought you were mafia. It’s what he told us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Alastor in this one, again, and no one's more disappointed than me. He'll be showing up again in a big way, oh. . .soonish though.
> 
> I didn't plan to post this on Thanksgiving. The dates just lined up for it, but while I'm here, thank you to everyone who reads this! Thank you to everyone who kudos and thank you so much to the commenters! 2020's been a wild ride, but there's been good with the bad, and I have so much to be grateful for. So many lovely, brilliant, positive people have absolutely made my day with their comments and played a big part in this year being one of the happiest in my life, despite everything! I love you all! Have a great holiday (and I mean the coming holiday season to any non-US folk out there) and I genuinely hope the world conspires to bring you as much happiness as you've brought me!


	9. Choices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter warning, and friendly reminder that there's a reason this is rated M!

The car drove on, its occupants quiet save for the tap of pincers on the steering wheel. Ash drummed along to a song only he could hear, and every beat of it was another twitch in Clare’s eye. His teeth grit, and his hands clenched in his lap, twined together so his claws wouldn’t dig into his palms. When the song ended Ash too fell silent, but it didn’t last long.

“So. Am I turning around?”

“Shut up.”

Ash raised his pincers over the wheel in a wordless, ‘Okay, fine,’ but ten seconds later he was talking again.

“Look, I get—”

 _“Shut up.” Clare_ threw in a glare, but Ash was looking forward at the road and into the distance. He paused long enough to see if Clare had anything to add, then went on.

“I was in the war, you know. The last one. The Great War. Everyone tells you how swell it was coming home, and they’re right. The front was a hellhole, and I’m damn grateful they made me a sharpshooter. But what they don’t tell you is you miss it sometimes. Not enough to go back—fuck that—but out there, you knew what you were fighting for. ‘For your country and allies and democracy,’ they told us before we shipped out, but when you see your brothers next to you in the trenches, you’re just fighting so you can all go home before they get shot too.”

“What’s your point?” Clare snapped.

“My point is, you start missing the _why._ It’s all clear as day when it’s your brothers and the enemy, but then you come home. Everyone moves on, and they won’t talk to you anymore ‘cause they’ve got real families and it brings back memories. You know you’re supposed to be like them. It’s what they all said before the war got in the way. Get a job, get married, live your life, but why bother when no one gives a rat’s ass if you live or die? And then you do die, and everyone here gives even less of a shit.”

Clare’s hand moved to the car door. It’d be so easy to lift it a few inches higher. To listen to Ash and not bother. To wrap it around the handle and pull, but something held him back. “Yeah? And so what? I still owe him for—”

Ash flared with irritation, filling the cabin with heatless blue light. “No, no, goddammit, you’re not getting it! You really expect me to buy that you’re still here ‘cause of some favor?”

“Yeah, I do! Now would you _shut the fuck up?”_

The swear startled Clare even as it left his mouth, but it didn’t matter. Mom taught him better than that, but who the hell cared anymore? Ash certainly didn’t.

“No! And the fuck you do! No one’s that uptight about it, not unless you got it in writing, and if you did you’d’ve jumped the moment I said Nick’s name!” He sighed, letting his flame return to its usual steady flicker. “But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I get it. I got it even before I died. It’s a different kind of hell when you’ve got nothing to live for. Whatever your real reason is for not turning this ship around, I don’t blame you. Just be glad you’ve got one.”

Clare’s hand tensed on the door, inches from shoving it open, and wouldn’t that show him? Wouldn’t it show everyone? The fear had vanished minutes ago like magic. Alakazam, and it was gone, drowned in anger, no souls needed. It was useless anyway. So what if he broke his neck again? He’d wake up in a ditch one nightmare later, bury Alastor’s dagger somewhere no one, least of all him, would find it, and start from scratch.

He could make a habit of it. Every time it all went wrong, he wouldn’t bother picking up the pieces. He’d leave. Kill himself and continue down the alphabet of names. Find someone new to make a home with until they did as any sinner would and let Clare down. It’d be his new loop, an easy, simple loop where he wouldn’t have to care anymore. He braced himself, took a deep breath, then let it out like a burst balloon as Ash interrupted.

“Hey, you see that?” Ash pointed out the driver’s side window. Clare didn’t budge. “The row over there? They’re apple trees, I’m sure of it. I hear Lucifer’s got a private orchard in the palace grounds. It’s ironic, don’t you think? His own Garden of Eden.” Ash didn’t give Clare a chance to answer before he was going on about his favorite varieties, but Clare could hear the tension in his voice. His pincers weren’t drumming on the wheel anymore but gripping it loosely, ready at any moment to slam on the brakes and pull over.

Clare could still surprise him. He could let go of the door until Ash relaxed, then lean left and grab the wheel instead. He could run them off the road, and wouldn’t that be even better? Dying in a car again? It’d be downright poetic.

Clare curled his hands around his knees, and they drove on.

Any minute now, he’d do it. It wasn’t long before Ash had his guard down. He was tapping the wheel again, going vacantly on about apple pie, autumn leaves, and bicycling through the neighborhood with old friends. Completely inane, but Clare's hand faltered when he raised it. It’d be one thing to kill himself, but Ash didn’t deserve it. He didn’t need to know that gut-dropping vertigo, the loss of control, the screaming brakes, crushing metal, shattered glass. The silence in the end.

It wasn’t Ash’s fault. He was only a bearer of bad news, not like Alastor or that man whose name Clare never cared to learn but whose face he’d burned into his memory forever. Ash was the victim here. Nothing like him and closer to Jule.

Ash finally fell silent as he turned his head. His eyes flicked down to Clare’s hand, then back to the road when Clare lowered it to the bench. “And when the pond froze over in winter, we’d—”

“Why aren’t you mad?”

Ash shrugged. “Why should I be?”

“He lied to you. Nick lied, and you came all this way for nothing.”

“Not nothing. You’re still here, right?”

Clare’s mouth fell open, but before he could say anything, Ash went on.

“But you’re right. He. . .well, misled us, at least for part of it. The deal was a flat out lie. Hell, maybe the whole thing's a trick to sucker people in, but none of it’s my problem. I’m no communist, no more than you are. All I know is he’s going places. He’ll end up changing this world, one way or another, and you know what? That’s something. That’s really worth something. You should hear him talk sometime. Really talk, I mean. Podium and all.” For a moment, Ash’s voice was distant, his eyes angled up to a stage only he could see. Then he flickered and turned back to the road. “And that’s enough. It’s something to do that people'll care about. It’s places worth going, even if I’m playing chauffeur.”

Places worth going, huh. Clare looked out the window, but all he could see was rows of farmland streaming by—shades of dull green at different heights for different crops, none of which he knew by sight. A hint of the old unease crept its way back, but it was easier here, so far out of the city. There were no buildings, no cars to run into save the odd one in the opposite lane. Only red sky and straight, open road, all the way to Perdition City.

It was where they’d find Nick, dead or alive, and either way it wouldn’t make a difference. Not for Clare, not in the long run. Nick may have been going places, but one way or another, Clare’s debt would be cleared. Once this was over, he’d make his way home, and Nick wouldn’t be coming with him.

 _Good riddance,_ a part of him spat, and it was easy to let it win, to let simmering anger soothe the chill of realization. Better yet would be throwing more fuel on the fire.

“What did he tell you?” Clare asked, still looking out the window. He couldn’t see Ash, but there was a cautious pause before he answered.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright,” Ash sighed. “Just let me figure out where to start.” He hummed for a moment and tapped on the wheel. “What about the circus? Was that real? I know it was you on the billboards, but it could’ve been anyone in the clown suit.”

Clare blinked and aimed a confused look Ash’s way. “What billboards? We ran off months ago.” Everything but the flyers was custom painted. Surely they would’ve known to leave Clare out. Surely Azarrien didn’t still think they were coming back.

Ash brushed the question aside. “A couple of old ones by the docks,” he said, “but that answers that. The way Nick told it, he was stuck in a work contract and biding his time until he broke out. It was a good cover, he said. He could tour Hell, get a feel for the people, and get paid for it, and he wasn’t getting killed like you and the other soulbound.”

“Except I wasn’t—”

“Yeah, I know. I get it. It’s not my story, bud, and you asked to hear it.” Ash waited a few seconds in case Clare interrupted again, then went on. He wasn’t a natural storyteller, not like Alastor was, but he spoke with the casual comfort of someone talking half to themselves. The only sign he gave of knowing he had an audience was raising his voice over the roar of the engine. The miles slid by as Clare leaned back in his seat and listened.

“It was back when we were just getting started, me and Nick and a few others he saw something in. Most of them came and went. Didn’t see that something back, I guess. But me and Trey and the others, we stayed.

“Back then we were still scouting. Looking around for territories with the right mix of targets, people, and overlords who wouldn’t kill us dead if we looked at them funny. Heretic’s Row was just right. Ticked all the boxes except the last one, and we could deal with that. _I_ could deal with that, or teach someone how. Nick’d figure out the rest.

“That’s what he said after, anyway. I think it was the billboard that sold him on the place. He was talking to some dockworkers when he saw it. Came to a dead stop, right in the middle of his sentence. ‘Well would you look at that?’ he said. ‘It’s me.’ And so he started telling the story.

“You already know where it started, so I’ll go from when the Radio Demon showed up. That’s when Nick made his move. He went up to your old boss and spun this yarn about negotiating for radio ads and how he needed permission, only he worded it so when your boss said yes, it gave him permission to go for good. Then there was the other half of the deal. He needed to borrow someone to watch his back, he said, and it had to be someone soulbound. That way the boss could keep tabs on you and know you weren’t running off. And if you were, he could call you back and leave Nick out to dry. It’d be safer.

“Except your boss didn’t know what he was agreeing to. Signed on the dotted line without realizing Nick tricked him. Nick didn’t have to come back, so he wound up ‘borrowing’ you permanently. The moment you agreed to go with him, it sealed the deal, your boss realized what Nick did, and the two of you hightailed it out of there.”

Ash finished with a wave of his pincer and was silent. Clare joined him, his eyes cast down at his hands held loosely in his lap. It wasn’t long until Ash was tapping a sharp pattern against the wheel.

“So, crock of bullshit, huh.” Ash’s words were just as sharp, but not with anger, no more than before. It wasn’t a question, only the disappointment of knowing he should have known better.

“Actually,” Clare started, and Ash spun to face him, only for a second before turning back to the road. The cabin still glowed a brighter blue. Clare cleared his throat and went on. “Actually, we’re not out for good. Neither of us. Only until we step foot back in the circus.” It made sense though, or at least part of it did. A harsh, begrudging kind of sense. “That’s what he didn’t want them to know. The guy leading them is still a clown.”

But Ash burst out laughing.

“You think _that’s_ the sticking point? Nah, they almost laughed him off his soapbox anyway! I thought for sure he’d put his foot in his mouth, but then he joined in.”

Ash’s voice was softer on those last words. Clare looked up to find him staring into the distance again, over the road and somewhere past it. When he went on, he wasn’t retelling anymore but reciting.

“‘Ha! Isn’t that right! Who’d ever think a clown could amount to anything? Or a line worker, a bricklayer, a soldier, a secretary? A fisherman? A dockworker? We’re all just a bunch of fuckups, is that what you want me to say? Well then go on. Walk away. There’s enough demons looking down on us for our mistakes without our own comrades joining in. None of us have any room to talk.’

“They weren’t laughing anymore, and I think that’s when he decided. Everywhere we went after that, he wasn’t paying attention, just comparing it to Heretic’s Row. Looking for ways to pawn the place off on the other groups so he could get the one he wanted.” Ash chuckled. “And now he’s complaining as if he didn’t set them up to fail. Well. Not really. They still had their chance. And not _now_ obviously, now that he’s—”

Clare shook his head. “What about the rest?”

“The ones who failed? They—”

“No.” The rest of Nick’s lies. “When did he say I was mafia?”

“Oh! That was just a few nights back. On the roof of this old townhouse, right across from Fleur’s hidey-hole. We were following her all day, but she’s on the lookout for snipers now. Staying in cover, always moving, and she keeps her goons next to her. I could’ve made the shot back when I was alive, but Trey’s still a rookie, so we—”

“Get to the point.”

“Alright, alright! Anyway, that’s when I said it’s a shame we can’t just sneak in and shoot her while she’s sleeping, but none of us are the subtle type. Then Nick started laughing and said damn, maybe he should’ve tried to recruit you after all. He said you finally told him what you got sent here for the other day, and. . .well. Between that, living in New York, and all the sneaking around, maybe there were a few unsolved cases you knew the answers to. Someone asked if he meant mafia hits or serial killing, and Nick only laughed one of those off. He let us figure out the rest.”

There was movement in the corner of Clare’s eye—Ash looking over to check on him—but Clare kept his gaze trained on his knees. His expression wouldn’t give anything away, he knew. Neither would his posture. Both were blank outside the lingering frustration. As within, so without, and he wasn’t trying to hide that nothing was connecting. Another mile slipped by, or more or less, and Ash gave him another sidelong glance.

“Are you. . .?”

‘Alright?’ Clare thought, and maybe Ash realized the word was a trap. Or maybe he didn’t care—this would be the place for it—and simply hated silence even more than Clare did. He hesitated, cleared his nonexistent throat, and went on.

“Are you going to say something?”

“I’m thinking,” Clare said, and Ash hummed an acknowledgement.

“Fair enough. You seem like the quiet type. I hope you don’t mind if I talk to myself then, or my nerves’ll be shot before we even get there. It always puts me on edge when no one’s talking, like we’re too focused on the shooting for a bit of conversation. It’s not a good sign, that, and I’ve had enough of it for one lifetime and then some, thank you very much.”

He kept going, talking idly about his old partner and snipers and spotters, and Clare let him. The chatter was distracting, and maybe it was better if his thoughts wouldn’t connect how he wanted. He’d tried. He’d tried to give his anger more rungs to climb, more tinder to spark and catch on, but the fuel wouldn’t burn. Maybe it was Ash’s fault, his casual acceptance raining on Clare’s parade. Maybe it was Clare’s. What connections he did make were all wrong, a groundswell of realization rising up to meet the rain.

There was no wrong Nick had done him that Clare hadn’t returned. He’d stretched the truth that night at the bar, letting Arjun draw his own conclusions. He’d gone a step further and lied to Nick’s face, back in those early days when Clare still thought Alastor would kill him. As for the rest—the lies upon lies of omission—it was necessary. Nick didn’t talk about work, and Clare didn’t mention the Radio Demon. Neither of them wanted to hear it. They’d kept their silence and kept the peace.

Clare stared out the window until it grew too much, then turned back to his hands.

* * *

For all Clare’s efforts, there had still been bad weeks when even a trip to the movies was out of the question. He’d done his best not to let it show—to drag Jule out of the house to shows that just so happened to be free. One of the last was an exhibit of Great War photos at a local library. They’d both walked home in silence when it was done.

Clare still remembered the trenches and soldiers, but not as clearly as he might. The library had left out anything gruesome enough to scare the children. He remembered the muddy, bombed-out wastelands, but he’d been a city boy from the day he was born. The photos that stuck with him—the ones he couldn’t help but project on the city around him—were those of broken streets and shells of buildings. Of city blocks turned to rubble and dust.

In a way, it made walking home easier. The new decade had made New York a darker place—grimmer, grimier, and downright merciless outside a few pockets of good samaritans. The city’s people had been uprooted, cast onto the streets, but nowhere near as violently as in Europe.

The thought was almost a hopeful one. The homes were there. The factories were there. They still had all the pieces. Anyday Hoover would announce a plan, people would go back to work, and the world would start putting itself back together.

Heretic’s Row was on the tipping point between New York and Liège, or at least what little of it Clare had seen. Right at the halfway mark between salvageable mess and war-torn ruin. The air had tasted of ash for a full minute before they’d pulled over, but it wasn’t the city that was in flames, or at least not most of it. A few buildings had burned down, but the only wreck Clare could see from his doorway was small and isolated enough from its neighbors to stop the fire from spreading. Controlled chaos. Most of the burning had been bonfires in the streets—piles of wood and unknowables heaped onto cars and set ablaze.

It had to be the point. The buildings were still there. The storefronts were a pile of broken glass and ruined merchandise, but they could be rebuilt.

Then again, they hadn’t managed to fix anything on the surface, not even after all these years. The newly dead said all said as much, so maybe it was a pipe dream after all. There was no taping the world back together when the cracks ran deep. It’d take a steady hand starting from the ground up and someone willing to pay the price. No wonder the radio had cost so much to fix, and in the end Clare had forgotten it at the bar. To think if he’d taken it with him in Ash’s car, he could give it to Nick right away. Happy moving out. Have a good rest of your afterlife. Assuming he hadn’t already been erased.

Clare frowned, looked up to the darkened sky, and leaned against the open door, careful not to pull it the rest of the way off its hinges. Hushed voices drifted his way from deeper inside.

“How’d you find us?”

_“Did they see you?”_

“No.” This voice was distinctively Ash’s. “I’ve been out of town. Don’t know which safe houses are safe, but I figured someone might still be looking for scraps on the promenade. So where is she?”

“Up north by the strip clubs. Last we heard, she’s been siccing her elites on ‘em. Guess she got her fill of zapping people at the docks.”

“At the. . . She took the docks?”

“A couple hours back, yeah. Sounds like that’s where she’s holing up for the night.”

“But that’s— Are you _insane?”_

“Keep it down!” a new voice hissed. There was a thud, and the first voice spoke again.

“She went around us. To the east. Didn’t want to dirty her dress or some shit.”

There was a long silence, broken finally by Ash’s sigh.

“The docks.”

“That’s right.”

“And she hasn’t taken the west side yet?”

“No one’s fighting her for it now that Avaris’s pulled out, but—”

“Then that’s where we’re meeting. At the old theater. Not the big one, the short one with the spike on its roof.” The hallway took on a blue tint as Ash came into view, backing out of a room and gesturing with one of his legs. “Spread the word and be there by tomorrow morning, the earlier the better so we know what we’re working with.”

The quiet was deeper this time, sharp with tension as Ash waited for a response.

“You’ve got a plan?”

“Me? No.” Ash shook his head, but there was a smile in his voice. “But I know someone who will.” He turned and brushed by Clare on his way out. “She’s at the docks.”

“I heard,” Clare said. Ash looked up at his ears and shrugged.

“All the better. Follow me.”

Only he didn’t turn back to the car like Clare expected but crossed the street. Clare followed him through a gap between two buildings and into a back alley. It was cleaner than the main streets, with only a scattering of bottles and cigarette butts, the usual litter of Hell’s better-off neighborhoods. A few blocks later came the trash and the needles. Ash led the way up a fire escape then crept to the far edge of the roof, and finally Clare understood. The Perdition River ran brown until it joined with the red of the Styx, but in the darkness it was a sheet of black glass, separated from them only by the shipyard.

“Fucking idiots settling in so close,” Ash muttered. “I damn near had a heart attack when they told me, but it could be worse. Look over there.”

Ash pointed to his right, past the fence and the train tracks, toward what might have been an office building amid the warehouses. The lights were on, but only inside. In the darkness, it took Clare a while to find what Ash was pointing at. Someone was walking back and forth in front of the building.

“I see him.”

“‘Him?’ What, no cat vision to match the hearing? There’s at least a dozen of them. Look near the doors.”

Clare squinted, and there might’ve been something. A hint of organic curves in the shadows, just barely silhouetted by light from the building. There were others too, all of them unnaturally still save for the one patrolling.

“Then those are her. . .” Clare struggled for the right word. “Victims? And Nick’s inside?”

Ash shifted beside him. “Could be. Let’s find out. Cover your ears.” There was a click, and Clare barely had time to obey before Ash shot twice into the sky.

The man patrolling froze, swiveling his head to find the source of the sound. The others near the office did the same, and the doors opened as two more ran out. In the sudden light from inside, Clare could see them clearly. Almost a dozen demons of all varieties, scattered around the office and warehouses and fence line, all looking directly at Ash.

“What are you—? _Get down!”_ Clare hissed, crouching so only his eyes peeked over the edge of the roof. Ash chuckled and waved down to the demons below before fumbling to reload his pistol. None of them moved an inch.

“We learned something watching her these last few weeks,” Ash said. “Fleur’s not the patient type, and she’s done plenty of recruiting this last week. Her attendants get the proper orders—formations, tactics, priorities, the works. The house staff get, ‘Guard this place, investigate anything suspicious, and take it out if it’s a threat.’ That’s what they’re doing now. Investigating. They’ll lose interest in a minute or two.”

Even as he said it, one of the guards from inside went back and closed the door behind him. “That’s right,” Ash muttered with only a hint of bitterness. “It’s just little old me with my peashooter, nothing to worry about. Anyway, did you see it?”

Clare risked a peek further over the edge. “See what?”

“Over there.” Ash pointed toward a pool of deep darkness by one of the warehouses. “By the door. Two guards. Neither of them looked up. They must’ve got even less. ‘Stand here and kill anyone who comes near this door unless they’re with me,’ maybe. Makeshift prison guards. I’ll bet you anything that’s where Nick is. If he’s still kicking, that is.”

Clare nodded. “Got it.” He stood up, trying for a better view, but it was too far away to make out more than shapes. “So how are we getting in?”

Ash turned to him slowly. _“We’re_ not getting anywhere. You think I can sneak around looking like this?” The guards took a step closer as he flared a brighter blue, but it was only for a moment. The fire died down, and they fell still once more, alert and waiting. “Fucking useless,” Ash muttered under his breath. “There’s some of us God really does hate, huh?” He shook his head and readied his gun. “You’d better get going. I can keep them distracted at least. And I’ll warn you if anything comes your way. Two shots for trouble. Eight for, ‘Get the fuck out now.’”

Clare leaned over the edge of the roof and took a deep breath. The sidewalk was three floors below. It’d be easy enough to break his fall, and after that was the fence, the train tracks, and finally the warehouse. Clare gripped the edge, breathed out through his nose, and froze. The warehouse. The warehouse whose every door would be blocked by demons who wouldn’t move and couldn’t be distracted. Demons who Clare had no reason to kill other than them being in the way but who wouldn’t hesitate to fight to the death before they let him in. He let go and took a step back. A moment passed in silence, and Ash let out a sigh.

“Look, you’ve got this. It’s just nerves. Stage fright. Take it one step at a time. Make yourself a nice, safe path, so when you find Nick, you’ll just retrace your steps, good as home free. Or so you’ll know which way to run if you do panic, but you won’t. Just focus on one thing at a time. First you get in, then you get to the warehouse, then kill the guards and—”

“I know," Clare snapped.

He’d felt stage fright far truer than this. He knew nerves and stepping into the spotlight despite them, taking the dance one step at a time in familiar spirals. He’d never practiced breaking into a shipyard, but he could see the steps anyway. There was the path he’d take to the warehouse door, outlined clearly in his bird’s-eye view from the roof. There were the arcs of his hand and his knife under the guards' chins. One step at a time, he could do it, but this was different than going onstage, different than a duel at the bar or killing someone who truly deserved it. That was art. An accomplishment. This was. . .

“Oh. I get it.” Every ounce of sympathy drained from Ash’s voice as he leaned back against the edge of the roof. “You’re the sort who’d keep it quiet if a German poked his head out stretching. Can’t shoot unless he’s shooting back. Too bad it makes no difference if he kills your friend now or in an hour.”

“That’s not the same.”

Ash scoffed. “You’re right. Those guys over there?” He pointed behind him, toward the docks. “They can’t sleep. The spell breaks if they’re unconscious, so she doesn’t let them. Sometimes she feeds them. Sometimes she forgets. Sometimes she doesn’t bother giving new orders, and they’re stuck guarding an empty room until they starve to death. So yeah, you're absolutely right. It's not the same. They’d _thank_ you for killing them.”

“I don’t—”

“And you know what else? You won’t even get damned for it. Too late for that, huh.”

Ash had a point, but it was off the mark, and he wasn’t listening. Right and wrong weren’t God’s decision anymore, not down here. He’d already had his say. It was Clare's turn now, but this time the choice was real. Not a split-second decision of whether to pull the trigger. Not an impulse clouded by rage. It had to be considered—clear-headed while he could still manage it—because now was the last chance. When he took that first step, there’d be no going back. The show would go on, no matter where it led.

“What if I try a window?” Clare asked.

He already knew the answer. It might work to get him in, but Nick had never been a good climber, even when he was healthy and unharmed. There was no counting on it now.

Ash stared at him empty-eyed, then shook his head. “There’s one thing that’s the same, though. There’s one thing that never changes, and that’s why we work in pairs.” Slowly, grimly, he pushed himself off the wall and steadied himself on three legs. The last he raised at Clare, his pincers awkward but steady around the gun. “Get off the roof.”

Clare blinked, looking between Ash and the gun. His pincers rested on the trigger, and Clare should have been afraid, but it was all too sudden. His throat tightened, but he couldn’t move.

“. . . What?”

“I _said_ get off the roof. Go back to the car or go get Nick or get lost for all I care. You have ten seconds.”

“But—”

_“Nine.”_

And maybe he knew. Maybe Ash meant to make it easy, the same way he hadn’t stopped the car on the way here. He’d left the choice open—keep going or turn around—but he made it a simple yes or no, now or never. Nick or two nameless guards who already wanted to die.

It shouldn’t have been so easy.

Clare took a step back _(“Eight, seven, six,”)_ then sprinted toward the edge. His hands caught the ledge and pushed him over, and from there it was nothing but coordination and gravity. His tail flicked to keep him upright. His legs bent into a crouch as he hit the ground and tipped him forward into a roll. He came out of it running. Behind him another shot rang out. Ash’s distraction.

And it was easy, easy, _easy._ Simple choices in the moment without concern for what they meant. What a weight off his shoulders for his thoughts drop down to earth with him. Everything was clearer here, drawn to a single point. Purpose taken one problem at a time. Quick, sure movements carried him forward, guided by impressions more intuition than thought.

The fence blocked his way. Clare could climb it, but he dismissed the idea out of hand. There was a dissonant ring to it, but only as he turned left down the street and spied a gap in the chain-link did Clare realize why. He wasn’t getting in but clearing a path out. He was planning for a worst-case scenario where Nick couldn’t climb.

The hole wasn’t big, not even a foot of clearance from the ground where someone had bent the base out. Clare dropped to the dirt and crawled his way under. It’d be easier going the other way, and Nick would have his scutes to protect him, but Clare had no such luck. Metal points tugged at his shirt, and as he pushed forward they caught on his dagger and pressed cold against his spine. He reached back to free himself, then shimmied forward and pulled his legs after him. A stabbing pain tore down his calf, but he didn’t hiss, listening for footsteps over the sound of rattling metal. Nothing. He pulled himself up and ran, favoring his left leg.

He should’ve climbed. His job was plotting an exit path, not taking it in reverse, but it was fine. The cut stung for being rough and jagged, but it was shallow. He’d felt worse and fought through the pain, dagger in hand. His hand fell and pulled it from the sheath at his hip as he sprinted across the train tracks. No guards yet. His detour to the gap in the fence had taken him left of where they were clustered.

It also meant he was off his path, the one he’d seen from the roof. The old path had him edging his way between stacks of crates, straight to the front door of the warehouse. This new one led to a raised loading platform, and Clare ducked down to catch his breath.

His leg was bleeding. He could feel the torn edges of his pants sticking to it, but that was a good sign. There wasn’t enough blood to soak them, to make them heavy and dripping with it.

A shot rang out. It might have been Ash confirming Clare hadn’t been seen or making sure he stayed that way. Either way, the coast would be clear. Clare listened, heard nothing, and peeked his head over the platform.

This close and from this angle, he could see into the darkness, but now the stacks of crates were in the way. There was no telling where the guards stood behind them, but it didn’t matter. Problems and solutions, one step at a time. He’d already gone off course. Might as well improvise the rest too.

Past the platform and left of his target was another warehouse, and on a hunch Clare crept farther to the left until he could see past it. Nothing. No guards between it and the next warehouse down. It meant a long detour—crawling up and over the loading platform, staying low as he snuck into the alley, and dashing to the back corner to peek around the edge—but it was rewarded. There were no patrols behind the building and only one guard in sight. The one standing at the wide-open door to the warehouse, staring dead ahead toward the river. Clare scowled, but he’d expected as much.

Another shot split the air, and Clare took it as his cue to move. He couldn’t see Ash anymore, not from behind the row of buildings. If he wanted to, he could stop, and no one would know. He could wait and reconsider. Turn tail and run back the way he’d come. Lie and say there were three guards with guns, and he’d ducked around the corner before they could shoot. Ash might know, but it wouldn’t matter. A bit of fake fear in his voice, and he might assume Clare lost his nerve.

And it _would_ be fake. Fake fear because the only nerves Clare could feel were the background noise he’d long since learned to suppress while on stage. Fleur’s thralls weren’t terrifying, no more than actors reading off a script Clare hadn’t studied. Predictable extras playing their parts. It wasn’t fear Clare felt, but not quite calm. He was too alert for calm—all the quiet placidity of a lake on a windless night, but focused to a point. Thoughts drifted below like schools of fish, but none of them broke the surface.

After all, the fear would be fake, but so would the guilt. It was less real than even the nerves, ghosts of other people’s voices echoing through the trees. _Thou shalt not steal_ and _thou shalt not kill,_ parroting the Word of God like human records. It hadn’t mattered then—he’d made the right choice, no matter what they said—and it wouldn’t matter somewhere so far from God as Hell. The Commandments were no more than wind here, and tonight nothing moved but Clare.

His footsteps were quiet and sure, taking him to the edge of the alley. No matter how he’d expected it, he still started when he saw the guards. There were three of them—one near the far end and two closer, just far enough in to see Ash in the distance as they looked up. Investigating as best they could, but in the process they’d left their posts. None of them turned as Clare passed soundlessly behind them.

Then there was one, the guard at the door—some sort of big cat, though Clare had never learned to tell apart their spots. He didn’t move as Clare inched closer, his dagger steady and right foot forward in a fighting stance. Even as Clare reached the edge of the edge of the door—a wide cargo port raised up and held in place above—the guard stood still as a statue, and Clare curled his hand around the door frame.

The moment his fingers crossed the threshold, the guard burst into motion—every part of him but his stony face, blank and passionless even as his claws sliced toward Clare’s neck.

Predictable. The attack was single-minded, focused on nothing but killing as quickly and brutally as possible. No care for defense or openings, and Clare countered easily. He slashed left, carving into the guard’s forearm not with Edric’s grace but with the unhesitating violence Alastor had forced him to learn. He hadn’t taken kindly to Clare holding back.

But the guard didn’t so much as flinch. His claws arced forward with all his brawn, momentum, and need to kill behind them. They swiped across Clare’s shoulder as he skipped back, not fast enough. Clare grit his teeth. It was just a scratch, and he had to stay quiet. They’d barely made a sound yet, only faint taps and rustles of cloth. Real weapons didn’t make the swishing, ringing noises Clare knew from radio dramas, and the guard didn’t react to pain.

But far from what Ash said, it didn’t make this last step any easier. If he thought about it, maybe he could accept death as the kinder fate, but Ash hadn’t given him time. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, no matter how much he planned. Clare ducked another swipe, and despite it, he couldn’t imagine feeling any different toward the guard. Nothing but pity enough to undermine any resolve.

The guard didn’t follow as Clare skipped back, and maybe that would be enough. If his only job was to guard the door, maybe Clare could slip past him, far enough inside to where he’d stop caring. But then he’d still have to get out with Nick.

It wouldn’t work, but there were more ways than one to make sure the guard couldn’t stop them. He threw a heavy punch as Clare stepped forward, but Clare was faster. His dagger flashed to the side as he ducked, slicing into the guard’s bicep. Quick, clean cuts to muscles and tendons until the guard couldn’t fight anyone. That would be Clare’s way past, and the guard certainly gave enough openings.

Next would be an attack from the left, but Clare didn’t expect the kick. He twisted out of the way, toward the guard’s bad arm, but his eyes went wide. The slam of the guard’s boot hitting the ground was loud in Clare’s ears—loud enough, he felt, to echo through the shipyard, and in an instant it ruined everything. He had to end this now, had to be ready for the other guards to come around the corner in case they had orders to raise an alarm.

The guard still had momentum from his kick, and he turned it into a wide swing with his good arm—heavy, murderous, but slow. Clare darted in, braced, and stabbed high at the guard’s throat. His dagger split flesh, coating his arm in a spray of blood. The guard’s arm curled around him, claws thudding against his back, but it was nothing but inertia. The arm dropped, and the guard after it. Clare took the weight, wrapping his hands under the man’s shoulders and lowering him to the ground.

A trickle of blood dripped from his mouth, but he didn’t struggle—didn’t gasp for breath through his cut throat. His eyes stared up at the sky, empty of hate, fear, regret, confusion, or any emotion at all. No gratitude either, but it didn’t matter. The old revulsion was still there, coating the back of Clare’s throat, but there was no time and too much tension, and there was something else in the way. Something small and sad. This wasn’t a person he’d killed but a doll. He hadn’t been genuine in his final moments. He hadn’t been anything.

He deserved more, and Clare fumbled for the right words—any reminder of what the man had once been. ‘Sleep dreamless,’ maybe. A flicker of hope that the man might stay blank until he woke. Clare bit his lip. “Sorry,” he mouthed as he turned away.

No one came around the corner, but Clare kept his eyes trained on it as he slipped through the door to the warehouse.

The moment he was in, absolute darkness pressed against him. It was pitch black save for the rectangle of light by the door. Clare fumbled for a switch but caught himself moments before he flipped it. He listened—silence—then winced and squinted against the glare of industrial lighting.

Immediately there was a shift. A clang echoed from deeper in and, from outside, three gunshots. It was only three though. Danger, but not enough to run. Clare scanned the area—six long rows of shelves stacked up to the rafters, three on each side of the central aisle. He ducked behind the one to his right and listened.

The warehouse was long and narrow. From far on the other end, he could hear water. A splash and a swish, over and over, but louder was the click of footsteps coming his way, a sound too sharp to be boots. It passed by in the aisle next to him, then stopped at the door. There was another clank, the splashing and swishing started again, and Clare risked a peek around the corner.

At first he saw nothing but a pair of butterfly wings, bright orange and black, stemming from the back of a hunched-over demon. Her hair was tied back in a bun, and her dress was the austere black and white of a maid, but the front was caked with layers of dried blood. She dipped her brush in a metal bucket and went back to scrubbing at the floor. Her hands stopped exactly at the threshold, paying no heed to the body outside.

Then she turned, too suddenly for Clare to hide, but she ignored him as thoroughly as the body. The bucket scraped across the ground as she dragged it forward, and she was scrubbing away again, this time at a thin line of blood. It led to another, then several splotches near the light switch, then a spotty trail pointing straight to Clare’s hiding spot. Clare clicked his tongue and looked down. A slow trickle of it was dripping down his leg and pooling by his foot.

It didn’t hurt any more than before, and there was no time to bandage it properly. The best he could do was keep himself from leaving a trail, and the maid didn’t seem to care. Clare sighed and pulled his shirt over his head. It was a lost cause anyway, the front stained from his crawl under the fence, and the sleeve torn and soaked through with the guard’s blood. The back was still clean enough, and Clare cut off a square before throwing the rest aside. The maid scurried over as he tied the cloth around his leg, grabbing his shirt and wrapping it around the handle of her bucket. Clare didn’t bother stopping her. There was no telling what she’d do if she couldn’t follow her orders, he still had his undershirt, and there were more pressing matters at hand.

From this close, Clare could see the shades of red across her clothes. Most were the dull brown of dried blood, but the stains at her hem looked brighter. Fresher. Clare bit his lip and clutched his dagger tight as he ran to the other end of the warehouse.

He smelled Nick before he found him. As Clare passed the halfway point of the room, he hit a wall of it—a smell of death so sick and cloying his stomach twisted. Clare stumbled, retched, and forced himself forward toward the sound of scrubbing.

Even without it, there was no missing the dark pool that spanned the whole of the middle aisle. For a moment Clare couldn’t make sense of it. A crimson flower with another butterfly maid wiping at the edges, but then his eyes found a focal point. Nick sat at the heart of it, his chest roped to the leg of a shelf. His hands were tied above him, but only one of them was whole. The other ended in a torn stump below the wrist. Red lines trailed down his neck where blood had dripped from it. Other lines spilled from his nose, his mouth, and the bloody holes of missing scutes, detailing patchworks of cuts and bruises. Some looked almost healed, but there was no telling how old they were. No telling how much more there was to heal, how much was below the surface.

His chest wasn’t moving.

Neither was Clare’s, and he forced his hand from his mouth to draw in a ragged breath. It shook in front of him, fingers clenching and unclenching as he looked for somewhere to touch. Somewhere uninjured. Somewhere he couldn’t do any more damage.

This was bad. Unthinkably, unimaginably bad. Worse than anything he’d seen in Alastor’s domain, not that he’d gone looking. Worse than the closest he’d ever seen to it, back in life. It was the same hate, the boiling need to tear, but this went so much further than what he’d done.

They had to go. Had to leave, had to get out, and _God_ was Clare glad he’d come. He had to untie Nick, but the knots were too tight and slick with blood, and so were his hands. He could— Clare whirled around, looking for anything sharp, looking down for his dagger. He found it in his mouth, where he’d stuck it to free his hands. The taste of rust was on his tongue.

But as he was about to reach for it, a bang split the air.

Then another and another, counting up to eight, and Clare stood frozen.

They had to go, but there was no time. He couldn’t free Nick and run with him, couldn’t squeeze under the fence with him before the guards tracked them down. And they would. Fleur would give the order to find them the moment she saw Nick gone, and it had to be her. She had to be back. What else could eight shots mean?

But Clare couldn’t run either. Nick’s blood was on his feet. He’d leave footprints clear to the back door, wider than the maids’ heels and fresh enough to smear. Fleur would know someone was here. Even if she didn’t catch up, even if she didn’t kill Nick, she’d post more guards. There’d be no getting in again.

Assuming he even had time to run.

Absurdly, it was Jan’s face that flashed behind his eyes. _‘Don’t die before you pay your gas bill,’_ she’d said, last words from one of the scant handful who might care if he never came back. Nick certainly wouldn’t get the chance. Clare’s laugh echoed through the warehouse, high and hysteric, startling even him. His feet wouldn’t move. He couldn’t leave Nick, couldn’t run knowing all he’d done was make everything worse.

So this was the end. At least there’d be some closure. Quince and Arjun could go on hoping he’d moved from Alastor’s domain and never come back. Edric would know he’d gone out trying. And Jan would find someone else to startle with small talk as she hung from the ceiling.

The ceiling. Clare’s eyes went wide as he looked up and nearly blinded himself staring at the lights. There was no time to blink the stars from his eyes. He darted forward and scrambled up to the lowest shelf. The climb was easier from there, an uneven ladder of ledges and boxes. His claws dug into the wood for purchase. His teeth grit against his dagger. Every step felt like an age, and he swore he could hear a high-pitched voice from outside, but he had to go up. Up was his stronghold, his place of safety. Rooftops and catwalks and ropes, places where he could move steady and unseen. The shelves wobbled as he climbed higher, swaying with every move, but his grip was firm and his balance even as he stood at the top.

There was only one step left to go. One long jump to the beam running the length of the warehouse, directly above the center aisle. Clare’s tail flicked then held steady as he got as much of a running start as he dared. Two short steps and he was in the air, hands held out as he’d done hundreds of times before, but this time it was dusty metal they caught. His fingers slipped. His claws skidded across the surface, but it was the blood that saved him. His fingertips caught on the edge, barely tacky enough to stick as he swung forward. His shoulder screamed as he pulled himself up, but he couldn’t fall here. In all his years in Hell, he'd never dreamed of a worse place to fall.

With one last heave he got an elbow over the beam, then a knee. The metal was narrow, barely half a foot wide, but it was plenty. It was safe, better than anywhere else in the warehouse. Clare scooted along the beam until he reached a support and sagged against it, finally catching his breath. The metal was cold against his back, but it was bracing. Stabilizing. The noise from before _was_ a voice, high, farther away than he’d known he could hear, and coming closer. It was only seconds until she’d open the door and look inside, and as long as Clare had even the slightest trace of luck left, she wouldn’t look up. Why would anyone bother looking up at warehouse lights.

The lights.

They hadn’t been on when he’d come in, but it was too late now. The door creaked open, and Clare curled his tail around himself, trying his hardest to make himself small.

The demon who walked in had clearly never done such a thing in her life. She couldn’t be small if she tried, not without tearing her own wings off. They swept out behind her, two veils of shimmering magenta, iridescent with teals and pearly blues. But even in comparison, nothing about her was understated. Her pink hair fell in ringlets around her shoulders, matching her frilled Victorian gown.

For a moment she flinched and stepped back, her coy smile slipping from her face as she grimaced at the smell. It was back before Clare could blink, and she strode into the room, flanked by two bull-headed bodyguards.

“Oh, Lily,” she said, her voice sugar-sweet. “Would you kindly answer me: didn’t I tell you to clean up in here?”

The maid answered mechanically, without any pause in her scrubbing. “Yes, mistress.”

“Then tell me, my sweet, why is it still so _awfully_ messy?”

“It was dark, mistress.”

Clare didn’t dare breathe, but Fleur shook her head. “Oh, you poor dear! Next time it’s too dark for you, turn on the lights yourself. But it’s alright. I was so hoping he’d be awake by now.” Fleur’s heels clicked against the concrete as she walked deeper inside, stopping at the edge of the pool of blood. Clare heard a sigh, then a rustle of cloth as she lifted her skirts. She took a few steps closer, tilted her head, then twisted for a heavy kick at Nick’s side.

Blood spattered across the ground, and Clare could barely hear the blow over the rattle of the shelf shaking.

“See? Still sleeping. Now, I know you can have this spotless by—”

Everyone but the maid turned as another shot rang out. Clare bit his lip, hoping Ash wasn’t in too much trouble. Any shooting now had to be him fighting off guards Fleur sent his way, but no. The gunshots continued, steady and rhythmic. Two, three, four, and all the way up to eight.

Then silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure there's more I could do here. I've already spent hours on last-minute edits to make a few blah parts a bit less blah, and I think it worked? Mostly I'm just excited for the next few chapters, so I hope this wasn't too messy :)
> 
> Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you!


	10. Too Late

There was no knowing when it first set in—no telling how much of Clare’s tension was from the gunshots, the strained silence that followed, or the unconscious sense of what was to come. He pressed deeper into the shadows, back flat against the steel support and fingers tight around the grip of his dagger.

The sound was subtle—pervasive as the red of Hell and so easy to lose in the background buzz of its cities. It snuck up without meaning to, a white noise subliminal as the orchestra shifting in their seats and shuffling their scores. They raised their instruments, and that was when you heard it. The first note. The start of the show, right before the curtains rose, and there was nothing left but to wonder how you’d missed the velvet in the red, the hum amidst the muttering.

But Clare knew even before he could hear it. It was in the shiver down his spine from more than cold metal, in the hairs rising on his arms and his ears angling up to catch a noise he knew should be there. The docks were quiet after the Cleanse, the rioting, and Fleur’s takeback. In the silence, Clare heard the first traces of static, and the dagger nearly slipped from his hand.

“Oh, go stop whoever’s making that racket, would you?” Fleur said to one of her guards, high and sweet and casually disdainful. She didn’t know. She still meant the shooting. “Take Three and Four with you, and be back here in an hour. And bring him back with you, if you would.”

The guard drew his gun and walked to the door without so much as a nod. Fleur paid him no mind, turning back to her skirts and scanning the hem for bloodstains. As the door opened, she started brushing away wrinkles, then fell still.

“Wait. . .” she muttered, then louder, “Two! Wait!” But it was too late. The door slammed shut behind him, and there was only the unmistakable static. Seconds later, it was broken by gunfire, then nothing, only distant echoes of a high, thin voice, muffled by walls and the usual distortion.

Fleur stopped brushing away wrinkles. Her fists clenched in her skirts, and Clare understood. He could feel her thoughts resonating with his, clear as crystal. _Why him? Why now?_

The answer was simple. Because he was Alastor. Clare bit his lip at the thought, and his hands curled tight enough for his claws to press against his palms. Because of his goddamned _knack_ for being in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time, right when things were looking up, without fail.

She'd been about to _leave._ Fleur wouldn't have sat around waiting for Nick to recover. One look at her was enough to know. She'd order one of her thralls to stay and tell her when he woke, and it'd have been perfect. Clare could have climbed down, cut Nick free, and been gone in a minute, leaving only the maids and one man guarding an empty room. But no. It'd be impossible now. There was no use planning ahead or hoping for the best. Expectations meant nothing when the Radio Demon lived to shatter them and toss the pieces out the window for good measure.

It was ridiculous, unbelievable, _unfair._ Clare looked down, tracing Nick's arm to its bleeding stump and gritting his teeth. Why, when all they'd tried to do was a bit of good in their world, did that same world always turn against them? No good deed had gone unpunished, not before and especially not here.

A God-given knack. It had to be. A gift to make sure everyone in Hell got what He wanted, the vindictive bastard. And of all people, He’d picked Alastor to play avenging angel? The man who'd grin wider than anyone as he skipped through the carnage? It made a sickening sense. Somewhere up there He had to be laughing along, smiling just as wide at this new touch to His world of suffering.

Clare waited for the pause—the silence as Alastor cut down the guards by the door and took a deep breath, the moment of anticipation before he blew down the house of cards—but it didn’t come. Alastor burst in without a second’s hesitation, twirling his microphone and narrating to his invisible crowd.

“—that we’ve met the welcoming committee, it’s finally time for the main event.”

His footsteps trailed crimson behind him, but he stopped only a few meters in, right in the middle of the center aisle where the beam blocked Clare’s view. All he could see was the whirl of Alastor’s cane as he brought it up to his mouth. 

“I’d introduce our next guest, but first, it seems we have a live audience!”

The blood froze in Clare’s veins, but below him, Fleur forced out a delicate laugh, soft and sparkling, thin ice over a cold lake. “Oh, no. He's not very lively at all, I’m afraid. I do hope he hasn't offended you. It’s so rude of him to sleep in, but neither of us could possibly have expected such delightful company. You can call me Lady Fleurenine.”

Clare let out a breath. Nick. He meant Nick, and Clare leaned out to see Alastor’s hand waving circles around the pool of blood.

“Alastor, and my, what a tragic oversight.” Clare could hear the head shake in Alastor’s voice and leaned out further, just in time to see the arc of his hand. It started pained, regretful, pressed to the center of his chest, then swept up to glide across the ceiling and down to Fleur. “One should always be prepared to entertain an unexpected guest, but here we are.”

Those last words were slow, deliberate. He didn’t look up, but he didn’t have to. There was just enough smirk in his smile for Clare to bite down a swear. Alastor knew. Somehow he knew, even though he hadn’t looked up and couldn’t have seen through the glare of the lights if he had. He knew, but he was playing around, now as ever, and he ended his wave with a chuckle.

“And while we're here, have you ever wondered what happened to the lawyers?”

Fleur tilted her head, bemused. “The lawyers? No, I can’t say I have. Is there a problem with them?”

“Ha! That’s what I’d like to know! I thought this place would be bursting at the seams with them, but you still get demons running around who couldn't phrase an order to save their lives.” He didn’t pause, but the slow nod of his head held a world of disdain. In a blink, it was gone, and he went on as cheery as ever. “Either all the jokes were wrong, or—and this is my theory—they must have found the right loopholes to get themselves to the good place. Such a shame. Just think what they could do down here with a well-worded contract or two! Instead they waste their time and talents sitting around in Heaven.”

He shook his head and looked up, eyes lidded, staring at a point on the beam only a few feet from Clare. He clicked his tongue and said it again. “Such a shame.”

From above, Clare couldn’t see Fleur’s expression, only the slow flutter of her wings and her hands raised to her chin in thought. He could hear it though—the feather-light, almost unintentional note of contempt in her voice. “Why, I’d never considered it! But you didn't come all this way to tell me stories, did you? Lovely as it is to meet you in person, your jokes are just as funny over the radio.”

Alastor only grinned wider. “Oh, you’d be surprised. Lose sight of the context, and some of them will go right over your head!”

He ended with a flourish and clapped his hands, and in a blink, the room changed. Alastor sat in a chair he’d summoned and gestured for Fleur to do the same, but there was more to it—some subtle shift Clare couldn’t place. He squinted, peering into the shadows, looking for movement or deeper darkness within, focusing until his ears started to ring, and that was it.

Fleur’s chair creaked as she sat daintily on the edge, leaving room for her wings. The swish of her hands running through her skirts echoed through the perfect silence. The static was gone, and in its absence, every sound rang through the room loud enough to fill it to the brim. Alastor’s voice could’ve come from anywhere and everywhere—from down below where he sat or right behind Clare if he closed his eyes. Clare gritted his teeth and focused on the scene below.

“But never mind that. I was hoping tonight _you_ might entertain the audience with a story of your own. It’s not every day an overlord goes missing in the Cleanse.”

“Well, it’s not every day we have a Cleanse.”

Alastor let out a laugh, backed by his canned audience. “Touché, but that’s hardly a satisfying answer, now is it? Go on; our listeners all want to know. What in the seven circles conspired to keep you from your territory for so long?”

“Not what, _who_. Insurrectionists. You should watch your head out there.” She shrugged and raised her chin. “Or don’t. I’m not your minder.”

“Hah, true enough.” He rolled his eyes, then leaned forward, doubling down. “But I for one can’t help but wonder how a single gunshot was enough to take down a demoness of your caliber. Unless. . . ?”

It was an unsubtle suggestion of what every demon was already thinking. Fleur dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand.

“Oh dear me, no! You think that rabble outside managed to scrounge up blessed steel before a Cleanse? I think not, and who’s to say it was a single shot?”

“I have my sources. You must have been asleep for that broadcast.” Alastor shrugged and widened his smile. “But to think, an overlord brought low by one measly bullet. What _do_ you have to say for yourself? I’d thought the title would mean something down here, but I’m far from impressed. Lucifer should reconsider how he’s giving them out before—”

“I got careless.”

Alastor had been leaning back in his chair—legs crossed, wrist twirling as he spoke—but he froze at the interruption. “Hm?”

The room would have been breathless—perfectly still and tense as a bowstring—if not for the sudden scrape of metal. Fleur’s maid kept her head bowed as she moved to swab another patch of ground, but the distraction put the ball back in Fleur’s court. She wouldn’t have backed down an inch even without it, but it gave her a chance to raise her chin. Her voice was calmer than when she’d interrupted, the haughtiness more earnest.

“It happens,” she said with a smirk. “I got careless, looked death in the eye, and lived through it. That’s the difference between us overlords and you mortal pretenders.”

Mortal. She didn’t stress the word, but it rolled off her tongue like salt against sugar, sharp and out of place amidst the sweetness. Alastor didn’t seem to notice.

"Oh? You met an angel?"

“That’s right.”

“Well then what are you waiting for? That sounds like a story to me.” Alastor had his hands laced in his lap, looking for all the world like a model audience. It wouldn’t last, Clare knew. It never did, but that didn’t stop Fleur from relaxing.

“Oh, you lot. So obsessed with death.” She let out a breath, half-chuckle and half-sigh. “Fine. It was, oh, fifty yards away. Six feet tall, spear in hand, waiting for—”

“From the start, if you would.” Alastor didn’t move, and his voice wasn't an iota more gleeful than before, but that was the lie. The broadcast wouldn’t show it, but his eyes were bright at the thought of hearing the words straight from Fleur’s mouth. Her spine stiffened as she saw it. Her tone didn’t sour, but it was a near thing.

“. . . And there’s that obsession with death again,” she bit out. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’d come here seeking it.”

“Why don’t you try and see for yourself?”

The silence ran deeper this time, long enough that the static picked up again. It rose over the splash of water, filling the room with Alastor’s warning—keep the show going or he’d be forced to find another form of entertainment. Fleur’s wings flicked, whether in thought as she weighed her options or in cold resentment. But eventually, she let out a sigh.

“There’s not much more to the story, I’m afraid. There was a shot. My guards—bless their poor souls—hadn’t the slightest clue of what to do in an ambush—a flaw I’ve taken care to address, don’t you worry. I awoke on the ground mere seconds later, but those savages were already on us. One held a knife to my neck, and I didn’t wake again until that fateful day.”

Her composure was back by the end. Fleur’s voice dipped soft and sorrowful, and Clare could see the hand pressed to her chest, the slow shake of her head. But the audience wouldn’t see it. It was for Alastor’s benefit, but playing to him was a dangerous move.

He was lounging in his chair again, casual as Clare had ever seen him but still paying rapt attention. “Goodness!” he said and held his hands out wide, gesturing beyond the room to the city outside. “And yet here you are. What happened next?”

Clare could hear the shift as Fleur’s smile grew to match Alastor’s, sharp-toothed and vicious. “I was blindfolded, of course. And missing my arms below the elbow. . .” She paused to give Nick a contented tilt of her head. “Sitting tied in an alley littered with broken glass. I won’t shock your listeners with tales of how I got the blindfold off. Needless to say, it wasn’t pretty. I may yet have died that day if they hadn’t made one crucial mistake. They posted guards.”

“Ha! Decoys more like, knowing your skillset.”

Fleur’s fingers steepled in her lap. “Exactly. Now, are we done here?”

“And cut such an illuminating interview short? Don’t be ridiculous.” Alastor waved the thought aside, then turned to her with a wide grin. “But I understand. We all do, and we tip our hats to you, Miss Fleurenine. How admirable! How brave to speak so humbly of such a careless, ignominious slip in what could have been a long and untroubled life!”

Fleur’s head jerked up, but Clare still couldn’t see her face. The obvious, ‘As if you’re giving me a choice,’ went unsaid, but she had to be glaring. There was no telling how much of it was anger or chagrin, but it didn’t matter. Either would make Alastor just as happy. Either would only egg him on.

“I’m sure our listeners’ hearts go out to you,” Alastor finished, then held his hand out, waiting for a reply.

“And why shouldn’t I tell them all about it?” she said. “I’ve been putting in such hard work these last few days to spread the word, and now you’re here to help! Thanks to you, everyone will know: those misguided enough to stand against me will all learn their lessons by the time I’m through, and I’ve already learned mine. Never again.”

“Exactly,” Alastor said. “Next time, it’ll take more than a bullet to bring you down.”

The words alone might have struck a nerve, but Alastor’s tone was the hammer to drive them home. There was a sharpness to it—an emphasis like a hint and a warning—and Fleur couldn’t have missed it if she tried. Her hands stayed still in her lap, but she shifted in her seat, her back straightening, her head steady, gaze locked on Alastor.

And she wasn’t the only one. Slowly, careful not to make a sound, Clare slid his dagger back in its sheath. It couldn’t save him now, but a free hand might. He knew all too well how quickly Alastor healed from simple cuts, and the safe bet was on an overlord being even faster. If Alastor picked a fight here and now, he’d leave Clare with two choices: stay hidden or run for his life before Fleur could see him.

Or die, caught in the crossfire or forced on a suicide mission to distract Alastor. No matter who won in the end, there was no way being noticed would end well.

But Alastor didn’t raise defenses or move at all except to swing the microphone back up to his mouth. “And that brings me to my next question. We’ve spent all this time on the past, but what about your future? I’d say it’s looking up, and you’ve been more than enthusiastic in re-staking your claim. What’s next on the agenda now that you’re back?”

“You can’t tell?”

“Oh, I’ve been seeing it firsthand, but this isn’t about _me._ Our broadcast prides itself on going directly to the source, so let’s hear it! A glimpse of what the future has in store, straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Fleur flinched but forced herself to ignore the insult. The tension shifted as she raised a hand to her mouth and let out a soft giggle.

“Oh, I suppose. I daresay your listeners must have assumed the worst of me when I said they’d learn their lesson, but not all we overlords are so brutish. Erasing everyone who stood against me would be awfully uncivilized, don’t you think? Why, I’d be no better than they are! No, I’ve been traveling the city and helping dozens of their worst see the light again. They’ve all dedicated themselves to helping me rebuild, as soon as we’ve finished reclaiming our land.”

"I'm sure they're overjoyed. And what about your unfortunate guest here?" Alastor pointed with his cane. "Still sleeping, I see."

“Ah, him," she said, carefully toeing the line between satisfied and sorrowful. "He’s the ringleader of the bunch if you can believe it. Generous as I am, even I can’t bring myself to forgive someone so conniving. Not unless he proves he’s seen the error of his ways and gives up the rest of his conspirators. If not. . .I’m afraid I truly will have to get rid of him for good.”

"Is that so? And here I thought you’d found yourself a new favorite punching bag.”

“No, no, of course not! I’m not _you,"_ she said, but Alastor was dismissing the thought before she'd finished.

“Oh, please. You wouldn’t catch me dead with such tacky decor. And speaking of catching people dead, you’re not worried?” He was leaning forward now, elbows on the arms of his chair and chin resting on his fingers.

“Worried? Of what?”

“They know he’s alive now, at least for one definition of it. Personally, I’m half-expecting a rescue party to fall upon us any minute now.”

Alastor spun to his feet as he said it, walking around to the back of his chair and gesturing vaguely at the ceiling. Clare might have smiled—of course Alastor wouldn't keep still for anything but true theater—but instead he tensed as the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

Alastor wasn’t getting up to leave. Nor even to fight. He wasn't done playing. He was only getting started, finally looking past the most obvious toy in the room. It’d been wishful thinking for Clare to assume he could slip away. Alastor wouldn't be satisfied until all the actors were on stage, until all the tin soldiers lay scattered around him. He wasn't the one who'd set the scene, but from the moment he arrived, he'd taken his own pen to the script, down to the stage direction. It was no mistake when he conjured Fleur's chair sat right at the edge of the pool of blood, right under the support Clare's hand was clenched around.

It wasn’t too late. Fleur could still refuse to play along. She'd been ready to attack before, and Clare could only hope she wouldn't take it sitting down for long. It was his last hope to get away—the only way they could throw off Alastor’s plans—but still she didn't move.

"Oh, please! They couldn’t make it through the front gate with my. . ." Fleur trailed off as Alastor widened his grin. She continued, slower. "And even if they could, they wouldn’t dare. It’d be suicide."

"And yet you’ve heard the rumors too. What was it you said? Waiting to see if your pal there 'gives up the rest?' Their locations or their souls for his freedom?" Fleur stayed silent, And Alastor went on, leaning against his chair and twirling his cane. "If there’s one thing we dealmakers understand, it’s how far people will go for a hopeless cause. And with that. . ."

The cane vanished from his hand, freeing both to rest on the back of his chair. For the first time since he'd stood, he turned back to Fleur, eyes focused and sharp. He took a deep breath and finished with a warning.

"Much as it pains me to cut our interview short, I haven’t been speaking in hypotheticals. I have very real reason to believe your life may be in danger."

But the smile was back in Fleur's voice. "Oh my!” Fleur gasped. “Is that why you came to visit and, ah. . . _persuaded_ my guards to let you pass? For a deal and a hopeless cause?"

Alastor almost doubled over laughing, leaning on the chair for support. “Who, me?” he said when he finally looked up. “Of course not! I’m only a reporter! Perfectly impartial, and yet for some unfathomable reason, I’ve lost track of how many people simply refuse to listen!”

He hadn’t finished before Fleur raised her hand. A pink mist bloomed around it and another around Alastor—the same shimmering hue as her wings—but he didn’t so much as stutter. ‘Listen,’ he finished, and with a snap of his fingers it burst like no more than a soap bubble. In its wake, a rush of power blew gale-hard through the room. Boxes shifted, shelves rattled, and Clare gasped as his foot slipped from the beam. The noise masked the scrabble of claws on metal as he flung an arm around the support and clutched it tight, heart hammering in his throat.

He’d known Alastor was powerful. Any idiot would, but this was different. It was one thing to hear his broadcasts or see him in his station. He was so utterly in his element there that his victory seemed a foregone conclusion, but this wasn’t his domain. Fleur’s hand had been outstretched to reinforce her spell, and Clare had seen it flinch—seen her fingers twitch as in an instant the pull of her magic was replaced by sudden blowback. She kept it out for a second, then lowered it slowly to her lap.

And at that moment Clare understood. He knew why overlords kept challenging Alastor despite his track record. He strolled into their territory with that smug smile, all but begging them to underestimate him. He toed that carefully infuriating line between honest and condescending, and all the while he slowly made the stage his own. When they attacked, it was inevitable, and Alastor’s grin widened because now he had an excuse.

But this time his eyes slid shut as he chuckled and shook his head.

“And here I thought we’d been over this. Why do you think I waited until now to find you? Your spell _might_ have worked on a good day, I’ll give you that, but you said it yourself. You’ve been putting in such _hard work_ these last few days.” It was a perfect mimicry, down to her cadence and falsely self-effacing sweetness, and in his voice, it couldn’t help but be mocking. He paused for a moment to let it sink in, then dropped back into condescending. “After all that time on the front lines of an ongoing turf war? No, I don’t think so.”

As he spoke, Fleur finally stood, flapping her wings and spreading them wide behind her. She held her hand motionless over the chair, and the instant he finished, it was gone. A crunch filled the air, and under her hand floated a twisted mass of wood, pressed by unimaginable forces into a rough sphere. It floated for a moment then fell to the ground with a heavy clunk.

Alastor didn’t so much as blink. “Really. After all this, you still don’t believe me?”

“I tire of this farce. Leave. Now.”

“Hm. It _is_ getting late. I shudder to think how the ratings will suffer if everyone goes to bed before the grand finale. No, we can’t have that!” But his only move was to lean forward, elbows on the back of his chair, fingers interlaced with his chin resting on top. “I don’t know how long you’re planning to wait around, but it’s about time we brought this to a close, don’t you think? One way or another.”

But as he said it, he held up an index finger, a signal to wait just a second longer. “I’m going to offer you one last chance,” he said, but he wasn’t speaking to Fleur anymore or even his audience. His voice went out to the room, and as it did, the meaning of his gesture shifted. Not counting seconds or chances, but pointing. “I’ll give you two words,” he said, “and it’s up to you whether they save your life or seal your fate. Look. . .”

And there it was, another of Hell’s cardinal rules enforced by Alastor himself. There was nothing that could end smoothly—no plan that could go off without a hitch—and he missed no opportunity to make himself the reason why, as if he’d known his purpose from the very start, better than anyone else. As if there was no other way he could go on living here. Nothing to be done but reach out spider-like to anything and anyone that caught his eye, let them tangle in his web, then pull the threads together until something gave.

In the second of weightlessness as Clare slipped from the beam, he glanced at Alastor, just in time to see his expression shift. His eyes flew wide as sadistic satisfaction gave way to shock, but one blink and it was gone. Here was the true start of his show, and in its place shone complete and utter delight. What came before was nothing, no more than Alastor’s chance to touch up the script, shuffle the score, and wait for the audience to gather.

“—up!” he finished with a fanfare of trumpets. Up he pointed, and Fleur looked, but it was too late. Too late for all of them. Too late for second-guessing or regrets or anything but watching the curtains raise and the show unfold.

Fleur’s head turned too quickly for an ordinary demon, pink sparking in her eyes, but Clare’s dagger was already drawn and aimed. It happened without a thought. His hand had been on the hilt long before he jumped; how long, he didn’t know. Part of him must have understood—the same part that sensed Alastor coming, listened for the words he meant for Clare alone, and let them guide his hands. It was simpler that way—easier than fighting the inevitable, no matter how much he wanted to hate it.

But the hate didn’t come. Clare braced for it, waiting for it to join the rest of the parallels—the fall, the audience, and death waiting below—but something was wrong. It was different, and he didn’t have time to figure out why.

Fleur looked up, and her magic hit like a sea of lethargy. Every wave dragged Clare’s thoughts below the surface, starting with the details. Every demon had magic, Edric had said. Clare could fight back, but he wasn’t Alastor, and the thought was lost in a tide of fleeting memories. Patterns, movements, and ideas swam behind his eyes, and for a moment one of them stuck. Something about last moments, but Clare’s gaze unfocused, leaving everything in a blur of red.

More red shot up his leg as he hit the ground. The wave of warmth clashed with the cold in his hand, and as the two met, Clare slipped under. He was sinking, looking up at a frozen picture as it washed away. It was nothing but smears of color—black and pink and crimson—but it was one he’d seen before. It should have been familiar, but all he knew as he fell away was red and nothing.

* * *

Color flooded back into the world with a stab of white-hot pain up Clare’s leg. He felt himself stumble, felt cold metal against his shoulder as he staggered sideways into a shelf. Broken leg, he thought and knew instantly he was wrong. This felt less like broken bone than a muscle tear, and with the thought came a flood of memories. The warehouse, the fence, the fall. The dagger in his hand and Alastor’s voice in his ears.

It was still there as the rest of Clare’s senses slid into focus, a hum that slowly resolved into ups and downs and grew louder as it did. A hand clapped down on Clare’s shoulder, but it was a while before he could start making out the words.

“—seems I spoke too soon. Even mild brain damage takes time to heal, but. . . Ah! Good evening, sir! Have you rejoined us in the land of the conscious?”

“. . .What?” Clare managed to mutter, and Alastor chuckled and patted his shoulder. It wasn’t a comfort, not in the slightest. ‘Us,’ he’d said, and even now Clare knew what that meant. All this time, he’d managed to avoid making his way onto a broadcast, but this was the reckoning. The price for months of teachings and time in Alastor’s company. He’d never made it formal—never a deal—but there was no defaulting on a debt to the Radio Demon. By the time Alastor came to claim, it’d be too late to back away, no matter how Clare wanted to lean away from his touch.

“Oh, no need to be modest!” Alastor said. “You’ve given your audience quite a show! I daresay nobody will be going to bed yet, not while there remain so many questions to be answered! Let’s start with the easy one, hm? What should I call you?”

Clare tried to smooth his brows, then looked up in confusion. Alastor’s finger was raised to his lips, but it didn’t matter. Clare’s tongue refused to cooperate, and the words had slipped through his fingers the moment he raised his head. He blinked, and his eyes finally found focus on Alastor’s, only to be pinned with a world’s worth of pure wide-eyed enthusiasm.

“No? An anonymous assassin, eh? Well, Miss Fleurenine certainly had enemies, and I can see why. No manners, just like everyone else in this pit. Why, she was a hair’s breadth from assaulting an innocent member of the press! The nerve of some people!” He sighed and went on. “But she wouldn’t be the first, so why her, and why today? Unless you’re another of her rebels, here to finish the job the angels started?”

Clare shook his head—a motion of inches that didn’t break eye-contact—and Alastor raised a brow and motioned for him to speak up.

“I’m not. . .” he started, then swallowed as speech came back to him. “I’m not with them. Just returning a favor.”

“Oh? And would that be a favor to Miss Fleurenine or a favor to her enemies? Or maybe to our somnolent friend here?” Alastor smiled like he already knew and looked away, freeing Clare to blink hard and refocus. His eyes followed Alastor’s, but as they reached Nick’s body, he flinched away.

It didn’t help. Everywhere he turned was no better. The maid was collapsed face-down at Nick’s feet, wings splayed and sticking to the ground with surface tension. Next to her was the bull demon, arms outstretched as if he’d tripped mid-lunge and was about to pick himself up. But he didn’t. None of them did.

And closer than all of them was Fleur. She lay on her back, eyes wide and empty, staring up at the ceiling. Clare winced and tucked his chin, but all it did was follow the trail of blood from her neck back to his hands.

“And more to the point, what’s next for you, hm? Any more outstanding favors you’d like to tell the world about? After such a stunning debut, I’m sure we’d all hate to see it become your last act.”

And God damn him, but it was too late for that. How did he do it? How did he flip so easily from all but confirming Clare wasn’t done repaying him in one breath to wholehearted praise in the next? From layering his voice with subtle threats to wrapping his arm around Clare’s shoulder with such sincere joy that the urge to pull away blew off like smoke? The few scraps left weren’t because Alastor was despicable or even the pain. They weren’t because of the rough cloth rubbing against Clare’s cut but because he could feel his blood staining Alastor’s coat.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, and there wasn’t a hope in the world of Clare piecing together an answer in time, but Alastor overlooked the affront.

“A man of few words, I see,” Alastor said. “A shame for the audience, but I’m sure a healthy dose of professional integrity is doubly healthy for an assassin.”

Clare flinched, and he could feel Alastor leaning forward in amusement, hear the exhale of a suppressed laugh.

“But that may just be for the best. The midnight hour is near at hand, and what better way to wrap up two long and eventful weeks of civil unrest than with a climax and a cliffhanger? This won’t be the last the world hears of you, I’m sure, but why ruin the surprise?”

Alastor’s voice dropped to foreboding by the end, but he wasn’t talking to Clare anymore. There was a distant, rehearsed quality to his voice even as he put words together on the spot, and it didn’t take long to realize why. The pattern was the same cooldown to sign-off he ended all his broadcasts with. With his arm around Clare’s shoulder, there was nothing to do but listen, and he wouldn’t have fought it if he could. The sound was relaxing. Familiar.

“And with that, we bring an end to today’s broadcast and a long, record-breaking segment made possible by our advertisers, our guests, and listeners like you! Tomorrow morning we return to our regularly scheduled programming, barring any more breaking news of course. Don’t forget to tune in, but for tonight, this is Alastor signing off. Until our next broadcast, may you all have a long night and a hellish day!”

Clare’s eyes had closed by the end, and in his mind, he was already home, listening to the radio and leaning against the wall, tired enough to fall asleep on the spot with the lights still glaring through his eyelids. It’d be too much effort to turn them off or even open his eyes, but it didn’t matter. They flew open anyway as Alastor grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. Clare’s leg screamed with pain, and he hissed and leaned back against the shelf to take his weight off of it. 

“Oh, no. You didn’t honestly think we were done here, did you?” Alastor pulled at his arm again, and Clare gritted his teeth. The last thing he needed was to get dragged after him, but Alastor only raised it high enough to examine Clare’s hand. Clare followed his gaze and blinked in surprise at the dagger still clenched in it. He’d almost forgotten it was there. The cold that had once surrounded it was gone, all except a faint metallic chill.

Alastor pinched the tip between his fingers, pulled it from Clare’s grip, and wiped the blood off on his palm. Even uncovering the blade didn’t make a difference. It was vaguely disquieting, worthy of a double-take, but not hair-raisingly cold as it once was. “Now that’s interesting,” Alastor hummed as he turned it to and fro. “Very interesting. Good thing there’s more where that came from, but you’ll have to be patient. Good smiths don’t grow on trees, and we can’t have you running around with shoddy workmanship. You have a reputation to uphold!”

“But—”

Alastor silenced him with a glance and pressed the dagger back into Clare’s hand. “But in the meantime, this should still be blessed enough to deal with any of the petty sinners out there. I’d think twice about using it on another overlord, but go right ahead if you’re feeling especially suicidal.”

“I’m not—”

“I’ll admit, you caught me completely unprepared!” Alastor stepped back, gesturing widely. For a moment, his fingers tapped his forehead, and he paused. His eyes flicked to his palm, and only after blinking a few times did he go on. “My fault entirely, don’t you worry. I never thought you’d be such a go-getter when it came to returning my favor! No one ever says to be an optimist in Hell. Quite the opposite, but that’s the last time I make that mistake!”

Alastor’s eyes slid closed as he took a deep breath. His head was tipped back and his arms at his sides, palms open. Clare couldn’t tell if he was savoring the moment or trying not to spin with joy. Probably the former. If Alastor wanted to spin, Clare couldn’t imagine much stopping him. Certainly nothing here. He’d look as gleefully at home dancing in a pool of blood surrounded by bodies as he did in the neon lights of the entertainment district. The blood Clare knew was staining his coat blended in perfectly.

But this was Clare’s chance, now while Alastor was elated enough to let slip an honest answer. Part of him knew it and searched for the words. Anything would do—anything but the denial Alastor hadn’t allowed. Absolutely anything—what Alastor wanted, how much more was left, and where all this ended—but his tongue only managed to stutter out a simple question.

“How. . . How did you know?”

Alastor chuckled and shook his head. “You should pay closer attention, Caeden! I said it myself, right at the start. A good host must always be ready for an unexpected guest, and how could I play to my audience if I didn’t know I had one?”

It wasn’t anything Clare hadn’t already heard on the broadcasts, but it was easier to accept on air. It wasn’t a stretch for the Radio Demon to know people had their radios on. It was a different matter entirely for Alastor the person to know he was being watched. A chill ran down Clare’s spine—not at the thought but in sudden understanding of how close he’d stepped to death. If Fleur had been like Alastor—if she too had a hidden sixth sense—he’d have been under her spell before he could blink. His eyes drifted down toward her body, but a sharp word from Alastor had them jerking up again.

 _“But!_ I never would have imagined it was you up there! Why, I wouldn’t have bet on it for all the chips in Hell! We’re both consummate performers, you and I, and a true showman never sits on the sidelines. He seizes any opportunity to give the best possible showing, but now I see! This was only a rehearsal! A warm-up! You took your cue perfectly, but next time I think I’ll leave the timing to you. Everyone has to leave the nest sometime, and with that, I think it’s time I was on my way. Sleep well!”

Clare managed a small nod as Alastor turned away. He strolled back to the door with a tune in the air and a spring in his step. His cane appeared in his hand, and he raised the other to his mouth before his shadow swirled around him and swept him away.

The moment he was gone, Clare winced and slid to the ground as if his strings had been cut, resting with his back against a crate and his leg out in front of him. The makeshift bandage around it was soaked through. No wonder he was feeling so lightheaded. It wasn’t from brain damage but blood loss. Clare forced himself to focus, gauging it against what he’d seen in the circus. Not fatal, he decided and let his head tip to the side and rest against a shelf leg. Not like the growing pool by Fleur or the drying one around Nick.

Nick. After everything, he was safe now. Or at least not in immediate, life-threatening peril. Clare stared at him from across the aisle, waiting for it to sink in. Any moment there’d be that familiar rush of satisfaction. Nick would heal, and it would all be worth it in the end. Clare kept staring, waiting even as his eyelids started to droop, but closing them would be even better. He could imagine Nick healthy, smiling, thanking him like Jule never got the chance to, but the satisfaction rang as hollow as everything else. Empty as the anger and fear and all the words that brought him here in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the slight delay in getting this chapter out! This month was really conspiring against me. First my laptop started refusing to charge, so I had to write on my wfh computer, and that's really not an ideal environment. Especially since work was already a pain with a tricky, ill-defined task that kept eating away at my creativity. Fortunately, both problems have hopefully been resolved! I've upgraded a new laptop with parts cannibalized from the old and made plenty of headway at work!
> 
> But while I wasted time not writing, I instead got sucked into the black hole of MBTI meme videos on YouTube. (Though I don't put much stock in personality types as anything but a tool for understanding or self-betterment.) In the process, I did end up typing all the major characters in this fic though, so if anyone cares, I'd be happy to chat about that or anything in the comments!
> 
> Alastor's dialogue remains a delight to write. "Right over your head" indeed.


End file.
